StrangeTony,
Kindred President Ben Breier shared important information for Kindred staff during today's second quarter earnings call.
Seeking Alpha's call transcript had the following information from Breier.
Let me start as I usually do by extending my deep appreciation on behalf
of the entire leadership team to our now more than 100,000 teammates
across the country. Each day our partners of Kindred work hard to
improve the lives of the more than one million patients we care for
annually. The excellent care delivery and clinical outcomes we generate
are the direct result of their efforts.
Kindred at Home employees should be aware of our impact on the wider company. President Breier praised us in the call.
Kindred at Home which comprises our home, health, hospice community care
and home base primary care businesses now drives more than one third of
our revenue and half of our consolidated earnings.
Those who came from Gentiva should know our lower health insurance and retirement benefits helped Kindred's bottom line, which we already disproportionately enhance.
We’ve done a great job in terms of continuing to as I talked earlier
drive synergies of Gentiva. I think we’re getting close to the end on
that we’re almost up to the $85 million level there.
In summary, Kindred at Home employees have done great work, most of us have taken it on the chin benefit wise and the company has benefited greatly financially. Surely a reward is coming to the lion's share of Kindred's 100,000 employees? Nope.
... we’re sort of at kind of a run rate on where we think labor is. I am not
sure we’re going to see acceleration, it’s pretty tough and summer
seems to be always the toughest part of the year, labor wise for us,
also people go on vacations, people start to retire, people think about
different things. So I don’t think we contemplated much of a change from
our run rates into our ‘17 guidance.
Employees can sleep fitfully knowing Kindred executives see little they need to do labor wise. Former Gentiva employees may enter 2017 with no retirement match. It's not clear how much worse employer provided health insurance will become but the drop in coverage from Gentiva to Kindred was severe for many of us.
We’re still working on health benefits. And just there’s a lot of moving
parts I think still. But generally those are the pieces that as we
think about getting back to at least $1 billion (of EBITDAR) next year that’s how we
feel pretty good about getting to that point.
If
executives feel good that usually translates to lots of employees feeling bad. StrangeTony, you retired at the right time.
Mizuho Securities Sheryl Skolnick recently
took Kindred to task for taking liberties with accounting adjustments. President Ben responded to her question on what's driving wide variability in quarterly earnings.
... complex site of the house if you will.
Unfortunately Breier was talking about the company's LTAC business not CFO Stephen Farber's shared driveway. Might
his former house sale be part of the guidance for third quarter being lower? It depends on
how things roll up.
Anonymous (from Kindred's basement)
