Dive Brief:
- Quorum Health’s operating revenues for the first quarter of 2018 dropped 7.7% to $486.8 million, from $527.6 million the same time a year ago, according to a financial statement.
- The Brentwood, Tennessee-based company attributed the decline to lost revenue from hospitals divested as part of its 2015 spin off from Community Health Systems.
- Quorum’s net loss more than tripled to $98.5 million, from $27.2 million the prior year. Contributing to the loss were $13.7 million in costs related to a hospital closure and $7.8 million in losses from the sale of two others, the for-profit health system said.
Dive Insight:
Helping to cushion the revenue decline was a $7.9 million increase from the California Hospital Quality Assurance Fee program, Quorum said.
Same-facility admissions and adjusted admissions increased 0.4% and 1.1%, respectively, and net operating revenues per adjusted admission rose 3.4% compared with the 2017 first quarter. Adjusted EBITDA was $18.4 million, down from $26.1 million the year earlier.
The company continues to pare down and refocus its portfolio. Since 2016, Quorum has brought in $84.8 million in net proceeds from hospital sales and closures. Most of that — $74.9 million — was used to pay down debt.
Quorum plans to sell up to $215 million in additional assets by the end of 2019. As of Wednesday, the company had inked letters of intent to sell seven facilities.
Among the hospitals Quorum is divesting is 77-bed Clearview Regional Medical Center in Georgia. In recent months, the company has also completed the sale of Illinois-based Vista Medical Center West and shuttered Affinity Medical Center, a 156-bed facility in Ohio.
To further shore up its financials, Quorum is hiring an outside firm to conduct a comprehensive margin improvement program. The focus will be on underperforming service lines, supply cost management, staff productivity and volume enhancement, according to the report.