Pediatrix Medical Group, Inc.

Ladies and gentlemen, thank you for standing by and welcome to the fourth quarter 2022 earnings conference call. At this time, all participants are in a listen-only mode. Later, we will conduct a question and answer series. Instructions will be given at that time. If you should require assistance during the call, you can press star and then zero. And as a reminder, this call is being recorded. I'd now like to turn the call over to our host, Mr. Charles Lynch. Please go ahead, sir.

Thank you, operator. Good morning, everyone. I'll quickly read our forward-looking statements, and then we'll get into the call. Certain statements and information during this conference call may be deemed to be forward-looking statements within the meaning of the Federal Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. These forward-looking statements are based on assumptions and assessments made by pediatrics' management in light of their experience and assessment of historical trends, current conditions, expected future developments, and other factors they believe to be appropriate. Any forward-looking statements made during this call are made as of today and pediatrics undertakes no duty to update or revise any such statements, whether as a result of new information, future events, or otherwise. Important factors that could cause actual results, developments, and business decisions to differ materially from forward-looking statements are described in the company's most recent annual report on Form 10-K, its quarterly reports on Form 10-Q, and its current reports on Form 8-K, including the sections entitled Risk Factors. In today's remarks by management, we will be discussing non-GAAP financial metrics. A reconciliation of these non-GAAP financial measures to the most comparable GAAP measures can be found in this morning's earnings press release, our quarterly reports on Form 10-Q, and our annual report on Form 10-K, and on our website at www.pediatrics.com. With that, I'll turn the call to our Executive Chair, Mark Gordon.

Thanks, Charlie, and good morning, everyone. I'm here with Dr. Jim Swift, our Chief Executive Officer, and Mark Richards, our Chief Financial Officer. We announced in December my transition from CEO to Executive Chair and Dr. Jim Swift's move from COO to CEO. This has been a naturally smooth transition since we had worked so closely on virtually all issues. It also kept a year-long process to sharply reduce executive leadership and other people-related overhead costs, which has also enabled fully qualified and proven leaders to assume larger roles at pediatrics. Over the course of 2022, we saw overall stable volumes and payer mix, both of which ended the year on a strong note. We reduced leverage and improved on our sector-leading financial position. Our revenue cycle transition process, as we have reported, has been very difficult and remains a key operational priority. Within our fourth quarter results, the revenue headwinds caused by our RCM vendors' delays in billing activities and extended AR persisted, but were largely offset by negotiated direct financial support provided by the vendor. Mark Richards will detail these offsetting factors in his discussion of the quarter. Since this poor performance persists today, just as in the latter part of 2022, we expect our vendor to provide all necessary support to repair this situation as they knew was necessary in Q4. We believe the plans we discussed on our last call to address this shortfall are the right ones, and Jim will detail where we are today with those plans. Lastly, we continue to be overwhelmingly in network with constructive dialogue with payers in places where we're not. We, along with our government relations team and outside advisors, continue to work hard to help defend against improper rules applied to what we viewed as a fair and bipartisan no surprises act. Now I'll turn the call over to our Chief Executive Officer, Jim Swift.