Tenet Healthcare Corporation New Wells Fargo 21st Annual Healthcare Conference

Yeah. Thanks a lot, Steve, and thanks everyone for joining us today. In the context of our conversation today, we may be making some forward-looking statements. In relation to these statements, I would suggest you refer back to the cautionary statement within our most recent earnings release as well as other SEC filings. I will turn it back to you, Steve, for Q&A.

Yeah, no, happy to do so. It is very nice to see robotics behind us.

Yeah because that's obviously one of the key thrusts in terms of the high acuity strategy.

Look, if you look at the ambulatory surgery space today, there are obviously plenty of growth and refreshment opportunities in some of the longer, more traditional service lines. There's also a tailwind in the industry moving things out of hospital-based or just more acute-based settings into the freestanding outpatient setting. That transition isn't as simple as simply having reimbursement in place or an inpatient-only list. It takes appropriate infrastructure, technology, physician training, clinical protocols, and so we really focus on that with respect to our ability to move things into that high acuity setting, whether that be bone and joint care, spine care, robotics. We've recently re-upped a significant robotics partnership to continue to build and grow in that environment. We've talked in the past about urology.

We've been building different models in the cardiovascular arena to try and look at that market, which is a longer-term opportunity, as we've always said. The ability to bring new physicians, new procedures, new innovation into the ASC setting will continue to fuel growth in the sector over time. So our focus is on revenue growth. We've been very clear about our focuses on revenue growth, supported by acuity growth, the margin structure being obviously something we've done a very nice job of preserving, both with scale and efficiencies, and throughput in the ASCs. Then we have an active inorganic strategy that is complemented by a de novo strategy with new syndicated partnerships.

If you look at all the discontinuity and everything going on in healthcare services right now, in this business, we're just laser focused on running our strategy and our playbook and our advantages in the market, et cetera, because we're not really very much affected by much of what else is going on. We're pleased with how things have gone in the last couple of years, and we're certainly pleased with our ability to build and grow the number of assets this year so far.

In the ambulatory surgery business?

Yes, through USPI. The largest growth opportunity is still building and growing the bone and joint opportunity in that space.

There is just so much more from a hospital outpatient department based perspective that can move. There are so many more centers and markets that have those opportunities that exist. There are physicians in settings where they have an opportunity to migrate cases at a higher volume with good case selection. If I were to name a single opportunity for the next 2 to 3 or 4 years, I think that is it from a high acuity perspective along with the things I mentioned before, supporting that environment.

Well, from a case perspective, we do focus on seeing longer-term trends and ability to grow high acuity. We do report on orthopedics, for example, and how that is going and there is a reason that we report on that and actually spend time internally strategically thinking about it, because that is what is going to drive revenue growth in the business. It is what is going to diversify the service mix. It is what is going to add acuity. It obviously creates value for any payer, government or private, which helps to keep us in our in-network strategy with our payer partners in that area and have the annual multi-year contracts that provide us with appropriate escalators in that space to continue to build and grow the ASC business, which is obviously very attractive from a value-based standpoint.