Executives for the Ensign Group touted a “record” fourth quarter — its first under the recently implemented Patient Driven Payment Model — during an earnings call Thursday afternoon.
“We are grateful to our team members who have worked tirelessly to ensure we were ready for the program when it went live and continue to help each operation adapt,” Ensign CEO Barry Port said.
“We congratulate [the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services] for creating an excellent long-term patient-centered program that rewards operators that serve high-acuity patients and deliver high-quality outcomes,” he added.
The company saw rate improvements of 3% for transitioning operations and up to 6% for same store operations after adjusting for recent market basket increases for the quarter, according to Port.
Ensign also reported that same store occupancy rose to 80.3% — an increase of 216 basis points — while transitioning occupancy rose to 78.1%, an increase of 279 basis points. It’s the fourth quarter in a row the company has experienced an increase of over 100 basis points in occupancy in both same-store and transitioning operations, Port noted.
“While we experienced a modest rate improvement in our first quarter under the new system, the lion’s share of our performance during the quarter is totally unrelated to the PDPM impact. We want to remind you all that this is just one quarter, and we believe it will take several more quarters to have a better sense of the long-term impact of PDPM,” Port said.
Port added that the company is “confident that our performance in the past, present and future are sustainable going forward independent of PDPM.”
Overall, the company’s GAAP earnings per share for the quarter was $0.49, which was a 48.5% increase over the prior year’s quarter. Its spin adjusted earnings per share for the quarter was $0.60, a 39.5% increase.
GAAP earnings per share for the year were $1.97 and adjusted earnings per share for the year was $2.24, a 29.5% increase over the prior year.
“We are thrilled to report another record quarter as we achieved our highest earnings per share in our history. These record results were achieved even without the significantly positive contribution of the very healthy operations of The Pennant Group that we spun out in October,” Port said.
He added that most of the improvement the company experienced this year came from “strong growth in occupancy in skilled mix stays and revenue across same store, transitioning and newly acquired operations.”
For additional coverage of the earnings call, see McKnight’s Senior Living.
