Dive Brief:
- HCA Holdings officials to updated its financial guidance for 2017 in its Q3 filings, expecting full-year revenues to be in the $43 billion to $44 billion range.
- Revenues for the quarter climbed 4.2% to $10.7 million from the same period last year. However, net income for the quarter was down year-over-year at $426 million, compared with $618 million in Q3 2016.
- Also in the filing, the company's board of directors approved a share repurchase program for up to $2 billion of the company's outstanding stock. As previously reported, the company took a $140 million hit from the Florida and Texas hurricanes in additional expenses and lost revenues.
Dive Insight:
The filling shows how impactful natural diasters can be upon businesses in the care delivery space.
Same facility equivalent admissions rose 0.3% in the third quarter, while same facility admissions grew 0.6%. Same facility emergency room visits increased 0.3%, the report shows. Again, HCA noted the hurricanes’ impact — to the tune of 80 basis points on same facility equivalent admissions and 30 basis each on same facility admissions and ER visits.
Same facility inpatient surgeries and same facility outpatient surgeries fell 0.7% and 4.2%, respectively, as hospitals and outpatient facilities closed or scaled back services during the storms. In all, 15 hospital campuses and one freestanding cancer center were affected in Houston, Milton Johnson, chairman and CEO of HCA Healthcare, said on a Tuesday earnings call. In Florida, HCA has 15 hospital campuses, 17 freestanding ERs, 10 diagnostic imaging centers and more than 63,000 employees. Of those, some were evacuated during Irma.
If surgeries declined in the aftermath of the storms and flooding, the Las Vegas shooting had the opposite effect. HCAs Sunrise Hospital & Medical Center received about 200 victims in one hour and treated 127 gunshot victims in intensive care. More than 80 operations were performed at the trauma-level hospitals.
“While we have very robust disaster preparedness in mass casualty plans in place, nothing could have completely prepared us for this … sequence” of disastrous events, Johnson said.
While East Florida and the Gulf Coast were hurt by the storms, eight of 14 HCA divisions saw growth in adjusted admissions and an equal number had growth in ER visits. Growth was particularly strong in the North Florida, Tennessee, Capitol and South Atlantic divisions, said Samuel Hazen, president and COO.
The company also expects to benefit from recent acquisitions. HCA closed the deals to buy five Texas hospitals — three from Tenet Healthcare and two from Community Health Systems. The company has two more pending acquisition it believes will close in Q4.
HCA also recently announced plans to build three freestanding emergency rooms and four urgent care centers in central Florida by the end of next year. The capital investment underscores the pressures health systems are feeling to focus on outpatient care as inpatient volumes continue to decline.