Home Health & Hospice Week

If your revenues were down last quarter, you weren’t alone. So show the recently released earnings reports from publicly traded home health and hospice companies.

Amedisys Inc., LHC Group Inc., and Encompass Health Corp. recorded net revenues for the quarter ended June 30 that fell below the levels reached in last year’s second quarter. Baton Rouge, Louisiana-based Amedisys saw revenues fall from $493 million in 2019’s Q2 to $485 million this year; Lafayette, Louisiana-based LHC Group saw revenues drop from $517.8 million last year to $487.3 million in the latest quarter; and Encompass’s home health and hospice business line's revenues fell from $261.1 million in the year-ago quarter to $249.6 in the same period this year.

In contrast, The Pennant Group Inc. and the VITAS Healthcare unit of parent Chemed Corp. saw revenues increase slightly. Eagle, Idaho-based Pennant, which spun off from The Ensign Group last year, saw revenues increase from $82.7 million in the second quarter of 2019 to $92.7 million in the latest quarter. Miami-based VITAS recorded $327.5 million in revenues for 2020 Q2, compared to $312.8 in the year-ago quarter, according to their earnings reports.

Revenues don’t tell the whole story, however. Amedisys and LHC Group both recorded year-over-year jumps in their net income — from $34.0 million to $35.1 million for Amedisys and from $29.9 million to $57.8 million for LHC Group. Pennant also saw income increase from $3.7 million in the year-ago quarter to $4.3 million in 2020 Q2. Encompass released net income only for its overall business, including inpatient rehab facilities, falling from $110.9 million last year to $48.3 million in 2020 Q2. Chemed Corp. didn’t break out net income figures for its VITAS unit.

But all five publicly traded companies agree that they’ve seen significant recoveries since the peak of COVID-19’s impact so far.

Mid-April was LHC’s “COVID-induced low point,” noted CEO Keith Myers in the company’s Aug. 6 Q2 earnings call. That’s when the chain had a weekly admissions low of 6,169, an average daily census low of 74,936, and a LUPA rate high of 12.5 percent. Other companies reported similar floors in April or May.

But since that time, “we have seen a steady V-shape recovery, a sharp bounce back instead of a prolonged trough,” celebrated Amedisys CEO Paul Kusserow in the chain’s July 29 earnings call.

Likewise, “our home health volumes experienced a V-shaped pattern," noted Pennant CEO Daniel Walker in the company’s Aug. 12 earnings call.

For example: “Total volume at the end of the second quarter was approximately 98 percent of our pre-COVID baseline and is holding strong at those levels,” Kusserow highlighted.

LHC’s LUPA rates are back at just above 8 percent, Amedisys President and CFO Joshua Proffitt reported in the company’s call.

Amedisys, which saw an “all-time high” LUPA rate of 11.2 percent in Q2, saw its rate return to below 8.4 percent in June, said COO Chris Gerard in its call. The company is on track to get to its “pre-PDGM, pre-COVID level” of “around 8 percent,” Gerard said.

Encompass Health saw its LUPAs peak at 14 to 15 percent in mid-April, said Encompass Home Health and Hospice CEO April Anthony. Like most agencies, “we’ve seen LUPAs expand dramatically during this COVID period,” she acknowledged.

But Encompass doesn’t seem to have seen the return to normal that LHC and Amedisys have experienced. “LUPAs remain higher than we’d like,” Anthony said in the company’s July 28 call. “But they have significantly improved as of the end of the second quarter. Some patients, families, and senior living facilities remain cautious about allowing our clinicians into their homes and buildings, but the treatment refusals have decreased.”

Pennant didn’t cite its LUPA stats, but did note that it “made significant headway on … reducing avoidable LUPAs, among other operational efficiencies,” in the quarter, Walker said in its earnings release.