LHC Group

Greetings and welcome to LHC Group third quarter 2021 earnings conference call. At this time, all participants are on a listen-only mode. A question and answer session will follow the formal presentation. If anyone should require operator assistance during the conference, please press star zero on your telephone keypad. As a reminder, this conference is being recorded. I would now like to turn the conference over to your host, Mr. Eric Elliott, Senior Vice President of Finance and Investor Relations. Thank you, you may begin.

Thank you, Rob, and good morning, everyone. I'd like to welcome you to LAC Group's earnings conference call for the third quarter ended September 30th, 2021. Last night, we issued our earnings release and posted a copy of our prepared commentary and a supplemental deck on the quarterly results section of our investor relations page. In addition to the earnings release and supplemental information, a copy of the thank you and ultimately a transcript of this call when available can be found on this page. Our supplemental deck includes our full year 2021 guidance assumptions, the impact of COVID-19, and detail on the breakdown among sector performance. All of our non-GAAP reconciliations and breakdown of adjustments are included as well. We will reference this information in our remarks today. In response to feedback from investors and analysts, the majority of our time on this morning's call will be devoted to Q&A. With me today is Keith Myers, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer, Josh Profitt, President, and Dale Mackel, Chief Financial Officer. Before we start, I would like to point everyone to our forward-looking statements on page two of our supplemental presentation and encourage you to read them carefully. They apply to statements made in this call, in our press release, in our prepared commentary, and in our supplemental financial information. Now I'll turn the call over to Keith. Thank you, Eric, and good morning, everyone. Before we begin, I'd like to acknowledge the hard work and dedication of our growing LHC Group family of nurses, physician extenders, allied health professionals, and administrative support staff. They work tirelessly on behalf of the patients, families, and communities we are privileged to serve throughout our country. Thank you for all that you do, sincerely. I hope that everyone had a chance to review the commentary and supplemental information we posted last night. As Eric mentioned, this is in response to requests and feedback from analysts and investors. Our intent is to adopt this practice in our calls going forward to allow more time for thorough discussion during Q&A. There are a few points I want to reinforce this morning before we go further. The first is that it's been a very long time since this industry had the cumulative tailwinds it does today from a demand, legislative, and policy perspective. While there are some entrenched lobbying efforts working to slow down the progress, the overwhelming desire among patients and their families is to be treated in the home. We need to get that right from a policy standpoint, and I'm confident that we will. Second, the challenges or headwinds we faced in the third quarter were related to temporary issues that were caused by the hurricane and a spike in COVID cases, impacting our capacity to meet the demand for our care. Yes, the higher labor costs will be a hill to overcome for us all, but again, I'm confident we will, and we'll talk more about that this morning, I'm sure. And lastly, I would note that we are laser focused on remaining a leader in this industry for quality, patient satisfaction, employee retention, joint ventures with hospitals and health systems, and both organic and inorganic growth. So we'll be happy to take your questions and look forward to a robust discussion around all of the issues. on the table. At this point, I'd like to open the call up to questions for Josh, Dale, or myself. Operator, we're ready to go to questions. Thank you.

At this time, we'll be conducting a question and answer session. If you'd like to ask a question, please press star 1 on your telephone keypad. A confirmation tone will indicate your line is in the question queue. You may press star 2 if you'd like to remove your question from the queue. For participants using speaker equipment, It may be necessary to pick up your handset before pressing the star keys. Our first question today comes from the line of Frank Morgan with RBC Capital Markets. Please proceed with your question.