Community Health Systems, Inc.

Good morning and welcome to the Community Health System's third quarter 2023 earnings conference call. All participants will be in listen-only mode. Should you need assistance, please signal a conference specialist by pressing the star key followed by zero. After today's presentation, there will be an opportunity to ask questions. To ask a question, you may press star then one on your telephone keypad. To withdraw your question, please press star, then two. Please note, this event is being recorded. I would now like to turn the conference over to Anton High, Vice President, Investor Relations. Please go ahead.

Thank you, Gary. Good morning and welcome to Community Health Systems' third quarter 2023 conference call. Joining me on today's call are Tim Henschen, Chief Executive Officer, and Kevin Hammons, President and Chief Financial Officer. Before we begin, I'd like to remind everyone that this conference call may contain certain forward-looking statements, including all statements that do not rely solely to historical or current facts. These forward-looking statements are subject to a number of known and unknown risks, which are described in headings such as risk factors in our annual report on Form 10-K and other reports filed with or furnished to the SEC. Actual results may differ significantly from those expressed in any forward-looking statement. of these forward-looking statements. Yesterday afternoon, we issued a press release with our financial statements and definitions and calculations of adjusted EBITDA and adjusted EPS. We've also posted a supplemental slide presentation on our website. All calculations we will discuss on today's call exclude gains or losses from early extinguishment of debt, impairment expense as well as gains or losses on the sale of businesses, expense from government and other legal matters and related costs, expenses related to employee termination benefits and other restructuring charges. With that said, I will turn the call over to Tim Hitchin, Chief Executive Officer.

Thanks, Anton, and good morning, and thank you for joining our third quarter conference call. Our performance in the third quarter included solid same-store volume gains overall, reinforcing the confidence that our strategic initiatives, targeted market development plans, and investments continue to strengthen our competitive position. Year over year for the quarter, same-store admissions were up 3.7% and at the highest level since the fourth quarter of 2019, or pre-pandemic. Same-store adjusted admissions increased 4.2% and also reached record levels, demonstrating the strong demand for care in our markets and the favorable impacts of our outpatient access point growth investments. We had our strongest ER volume so far this year in the third quarter, and we had a record quarter for physician practice visits, which is typically a leading indicator for future procedural volumes. Surgeries grew 1.6% year over year, but sequentially reflected more normal seasonality, including more vacations by physicians and patients. Since the middle of 2022, we have been discussing our near-term priorities, or our roadmap for navigating the overall industry and macroeconomic environment. I want to give you an update on these activities as we move toward the end of the year and prepare for 2024. As outlined in our supplemental deck, this organization-wide focus covers four main categories. They are accelerate growth, strengthen the workforce, control expenses, and advance safety and quality. First, we remain optimistic about our growth prospects and the ability to accelerate growth as we invest in our core markets. and implement a number of operational initiatives to create more capacity for patient care. Our campus expansion projects in Knoxville, Tennessee and Foley, Alabama are on schedule with the Knoxville project expected to open early next year and the Foley expansion on track to open at the end of 2024. Due to the high occupancy rates in both markets, the tower additions are integral to achieving our market share growth opportunities. Upon their completion, we will have added more than 500 incremental beds across our portfolio since 2018, all initiated to advance growth prospects in high opportunity markets. We are intensely focused on length of stay and capacity optimization work. Our efforts to safely and promptly discharge patients ready to leave the hospital and return home or move into a post-acute care setting resulted in improved length of stay compared to last year and sequentially. This resulted in strong admission growth in the quarter with a favorable net 1.3% reduction in total patient days. Strengthening our workforce remains another key priority. Our nursing and clinical recruitment and retention strategies continue to perform well, enabling further improvements in contract labor in the third quarter. In terms of our work to insource hospitalist and emergency medicine programs in select CHS hospitals, we have now more than 500 ED and hospitalist medicine providers working under this model. We are pleased with the strategic and financial benefits from this effort in the third quarter. We are confident in our ability to scale this solution as needed, and planning is currently underway to insource anesthesia services in select markets as well. Finally, a couple of notes about our safety and quality initiatives. Our clinical scorecard, designed to better leverage clinical data at a market and company-wide level, was launched just over one year ago. This resource has provided great insights into areas where we can further advance and excel in patient safety and quality, leading to very targeted areas of improvement. For example, the majority of our hospitals are now in the top quartile nationally for prevention of certain hospital-acquired infections. And a company-wide initiative to stop sepsis has resulted in a sustainable reduction in mortality due to sepsis. Healthcare providers continue to face headwinds, including reimbursement challenges, inflationary pressures, regulatory hurdles, and evolving consumer behaviors. and all of which are areas of dedicated focus for our management team. As we navigate through these industry dynamics, we will continue to exercise control where we can and adaptability when we need to in order to further strengthen our results. With that, Kevin, let me turn the call over to you.