to Surgery Partners' fourth quarter 2021 earnings conference call. At this time, all participants are in listen-only mode. A question and answer session will follow the formal presentation. If anyone should require operator assistance during the conference, please press star zero on your telephone keypad. As a reminder, this conference is being recorded. I'd now like to turn the conference over to your host, Dave Doherty, Chief Financial Officer. Please go ahead. Good afternoon, and welcome to Surgery Partners' fourth quarter and year-end 2021 earnings call. This is Dave Doherty, Chief Financial Officer. Joining me today are Wayne DeVeydt, Surgery Partners' Executive Chairman, and Eric Evans, Surgery Partners' Chief Executive Officer. As a reminder, during this call we will make forward-looking statements. Risk factors that may impact those statements and could cause actual future results to differ materially from currently projected results are described in this afternoon's press release and the reports we file with the SEC. The company does not undertake any duty to update such forward-looking statements. Additionally, during today's call, the company will discuss certain non-GAAP measures which we believe can be useful in evaluating our performance. The presentation of this additional information should not be considered in isolation or as a substitute for results prepared in accordance with GAAP. A reconciliation of these measures can be found in our earnings release, which is posted on our website at surgerypartners.com, and in our most recent annual report when filed. With that, I'll turn the call over to Wayne. Wayne? Thank you, Dave. Good afternoon, and thank you all for joining us today. Before we begin, I would like to take a moment to thank all of our employees and frontline workers supporting the U.S. healthcare system during these unique times. They truly embody the American spirit of caring and providing for others, and we appreciate the opportunity to support these efforts and to have the privilege of serving our communities. Turning to our financial results, I'm pleased to report full year adjusted EBITDA of $339.6 million, a 32% increase as compared to the prior year. For the full year, we performed just shy of 550,000 surgical cases, nearly 20% more than 2020 and almost 5% greater than the pre-pandemic period in 2019, resulting in annual revenue of $2.2 billion, a new record high for Surgery Partners. We are especially proud of these results as our company was not isolated from the continued impact of the pandemic with rising cases and successive waves of the Delta and Omicron variants, associated labor pressures, and a rapidly changing regulatory landscape. As we've discussed before, our operating model has proven resilient in this dynamic environment, and the Board of Directors continues to be proud of how this management team and our 10,000+ associates has navigated these challenges while providing the highest quality care to our patients. As we look closer at our fourth quarter, results were impacted by regional COVID-19 cases, some labor pressures in select markets, and the continued recovery from Hurricane Ida in our Louisiana facilities. Despite these headwinds, our results continue to affirm the power of our business model and the value proposition we provide. Some notable highlights of the fourth quarter include the following. Net revenues increased to $610 million, approximately 11.3% growth over the prior- year quarter. Same-facility revenues increased by 9.6% compared to the prior year quarter, with 5.2% higher net revenue per case and 4.2% case volume growth. New physician recruiting efforts continue to produce strong outcomes, adding 24% more new recruits to our facilities in the fourth quarter compared to the same quarter in 2020. We now estimate over 4,600 physicians use our facilities on a regular basis. Finally, the transition of procedures out of traditional acute care inpatient settings continues to accelerate. Joint replacements in our ASCs were up 55% as compared to the prior- year quarter and approximately 88% for the year. We continue to believe that our strong financial results are a reflection of the numerous macro tailwinds associated with the benefit of performing procedures in a high quality, lower cost patient and physician-centric setting. With a total addressable market of over $150 billion, our company was built for this moment in time. Before I turn the call over to Eric, I would like to take a moment to discuss the M&A pipeline and our efforts to continue to consolidate this highly fragmented industry. After raising significant capital in 2021, we are pleased to announce that we've closed approximately $325 million in transactions at an average adjusted EBITDA multiple of approximately 8x, including three deals that were closed in late December. Our business development team consistently manages an active and robust pipeline that remains strong heading into 2022. As a point of reference, we have already deployed an incremental $34 million in acquisitions since the beginning of 2022. As Dave will discuss in a moment, we enter 2022 with a strong balance sheet with significant cash on hand and an untapped revolver. This position gives us conviction to reach our commitment to deploying at least $200 million in capital for the full year 2022. I wanna emphasize the confidence we have in our long-term growth prospects. Our management team continues to demonstrate their ability to navigate the complexities of not only the pandemic, but other challenges as it executes on the organic and inorganic growth strategies to provide significant year-over-year growth. Off the strength of our fourth quarter reported results and recent acquisitions, we are raising our outlook guidance for 2022 adjusted EBITDA to a range of $370 million-$380 million. This outlook is inclusive of the anticipated headwinds we see associated with the pandemic, including labor and supply cost pressures. With that, let me turn the call over to Eric. Eric? Thank you, Wayne, and good afternoon. Today, I will focus my comments on three areas that will explain my optimism for the company as we enter 2022 and our updated guidance for the year. First, I will provide a few additional highlights of our fourth quarter results. Second, I'll spend a moment talking about our most recent experience with COVID, the Omicron variant, and the labor pressures we've seen in our industry related to clinical care. Finally, I will discuss our organic growth initiatives as well as dive a little deeper on our recent acquisitions and the increasing focus we are placing on de novo development and health system and health plan partnership opportunities as our industry continues to migrate care to the highest value setting. As Wayne indicated, we are pleased with our fourth quarter results, which demonstrated strong top-line growth and higher adjusted EBITDA margins. The growth in total reported revenue was greater than 11% and 9.6% on a same facility basis. As we've mentioned throughout this pandemic, our business model has been affected by illnesses that have temporarily affected some of our physicians, clinicians, and patients. These events tend to be temporary and site-specific. Surgical cases, which grew by over 10,500 in the quarter compared to the prior- year quarter, are often rescheduled within weeks if necessary, due to the nature of these cases and the fact that our facilities are increasingly sought after by all constituents in the healthcare system. The mix of surgical cases and specialties has also largely stabilized in line with our expectations as GI cases have rebounded to above pre-pandemic levels and our investments in recruiting physicians that focus on higher acuity orthopedic cases continues to be successful. Our ability to manage through the significant impact of COVID in the quarter demonstrates the resiliency and popularity of our business model. Another factor that we are watching and managing very closely is the labor pressures seen in our industry. As we've said before, we are not isolated from these pressures, but we are somewhat insulated due to the workplace environment in which we operate. In our fourth quarter results reported this afternoon, you will note our labor costs were just under 29% of total revenue, consistent with our third quarter, but about 100 basis points higher than the reported amount in 2020. We certainly anticipated some of this increase, but where we projected it and where it showed up were in those regions that were affected more significantly by the Omicron variant, most notably in our California facilities. Based on our comprehensive review, we believe these pressures are localized, not widespread, and largely temporary responses to supply and demand pressures. We have considered some of the regional labor rate pressures in our plans for 2022. Rest assured that we constantly monitor and closely manage these costs. When we saw this trend begin to emerge in early 2021, we developed more robust and detailed intelligence reporting that enhanced our operators' and executives' ability to proactively manage labor efficiency, premium labor statistics, and other key metrics with the objective of rapidly identifying hotspots as well as best practices. Early trends we are seeing in January support our view that any labor pressure we experience is largely temporary. Regional hotspots have COVID-related deferrals and labor pressures that abate nearly as quickly as they arise. Dave will talk about this in more detail next, but our reported adjusted EBITDA of $114.4 million for the quarter and $339.6 million for the year represent a new all-time high for our company. We continue to benefit from our relentless focus on physician recruitment and targeted facility level and service line expansions that contribute to higher overall revenue per case rates and generate the highest contribution margin for our portfolio. Let's walk through each of these areas, starting with physician recruitment. As Wayne mentioned, our recruiting team was very productive in the fourth quarter, recruiting 24% more physicians in that quarter than the prior- year quarter. For the full year 2021, we recruited nearly 625 new surgeons, 13% more than 2020, across all of our core specialties, meaningfully outpacing the loss of physicians due to typical attrition, such as retirement or relocation. We continue to be bullish on the migration of procedures to our lower cost settings, particularly in the orthopedic, spine, and cardiovascular specialties. Over 80% of our facilities perform MSK procedures, and approximately 60% have the potential to perform cardiac procedures, which we believe is the next big wave of migration. To earn this growth and support our specialist recruiting, we've been investing in robotics, state-of-the-art clinical equipment, and OR capacity to position us as the most convenient and efficient provider for these high-growth areas. For example, we now have 39 robots in our system and expect that number to be 43 by the end of 2022. Since 2019, we have doubled the number of robots in our facilities. All of this has helped fuel our growth in MSK procedures, particularly total joint cases in our ASCs, which have grown 88% in 2021 when compared to 2020. Our orthopedic procedures exceeded 90,000 and have grown by 50% since 2017, when we strategically focused on this specialty. We do not see this growth slowing in the near future. While we remain focused on growing this specialty, we are preparing for the next wave in cardiac procedures that is in the very early innings. Not only are we investing in equipment and renovations of existing facilities to capture this migration, we are also increasingly focusing on our pipeline of de novo opportunities and partnerships with key influencers in this space. As Wayne mentioned, our pace of capital deployment has accelerated with approximately $325 million of acquisitions completed in 2021 at multiples consistent with what we have historically seen of approximately 8x. We've talked about the strength of our pipeline in the past, and that was demonstrated by the pace of acquisitions completed in December, where we put $185 million to work in three separate deals, including an orthopedic surgical hospital in Omaha, Nebraska, which we are very excited about and proud to add to our platform. Supporting this important aspect of our growth is a dedicated development team, which is now supplemented by dedicated functional teams that are involved in all phases of the deal, from due diligence through integration. This approach gives us greater confidence in seamlessly integrating new facilities into our portfolio and to enhancing the future growth of these facilities. We target acquisitions pricing around 7x-9x adjusted EBITDA, plus or minus depending on the specialty, but we target our internal team to bring that down at least a full turn within the first 18 months based on our platform synergies. So far, our 2021 acquisitions are on track to hit this aggressive target. The pipeline remains strong in 2022. As Wayne mentioned, in January, we closed two additional deals for approximately $34 million within our targeted multiple range. Our process for executing on M&A opportunities is now core to our DNA and allows us to begin focusing on additional areas of organic and inorganic growth, such as de novo partnerships and partnerships with health systems and health plans. We will share more news on these fronts in the coming quarters as there are exciting opportunities that are in the early stages of development. We are also exploring unique partnerships that position us to earn higher market share from large and growing physician practices incentivized by value-based compensation. Earlier this month, we announced a partnership with Privia Health in the state of Montana. This partnership gives Privia an entrance into this important geography and gives our facilities access to best-in-class physician clinic technology that fosters efficiency, allowing our doctors to focus on what matters most, their patients. Although this deal is projected to be neutral to our 2022 earnings, it represents a potential long-term value creation opportunity as we expand our high-value services across the state of Montana. Together, we are monitoring this partnership in anticipation of its leading to additional strategic growth opportunities elsewhere in the country. Moving on to guidance. As we think about the momentum we have as an organization, the performance of our business allowed us to guide to at least $370 million of adjusted EBITDA on our third quarter of 2021 call, which we reaffirmed in January of this year. Since then, having developed our operating plan for 2022 and having delivered a strong fourth quarter print, we are raising our 2022 adjusted EBITDA guidance to a range of $370 million-$380 million, with revenue growth of at least 12% over 2021. Underlying this updated guidance is a great deal of optimism in 2022. Returning to what our new normal will be and earning our share of the continued migration of high acuity cases should yield very strong results, particularly when coupled with our completed M&A. As Wayne stated, we continue to target at least $200 million of capital deployment every year, and 2022 is no exception. With our January acquisitions, we are starting out strong. We are also being somewhat cautious as we are cognizant that COVID remains a part of our lives, and with it comes the potential for labor and supply cost pressures and short-term volume disruptions. As the year progresses, we are confident that we can manage through these risks as we did in 2021. Our teams are highly aligned, and we are executing on our initiatives across business development, recruiting, managed care, procurement, revenue cycle, and operations to achieve our goals. To summarize our position, our company's differentiated strategy is built on the premise that we provide a cost-efficient, high quality, and patient-centered environment in our purpose-built short stay surgical facilities. Now more than ever, our value proposition is solidified with key stakeholders in the healthcare environment. We remain confident in our long-term organic growth mode. We believe that scaled independent operators such as Surgery Partners, in collaboration with our physician partners, are uniquely positioned to grow in this new marketplace. With that said, I will turn the call over to Dave, who will provide additional color on our financial results and our outlook. Dave? Thanks, Eric. First, I'll spend a few minutes on our fourth quarter financial performance before moving on to liquidity and some considerations we have as we move into 2022. Starting with the top line, surgical cases improved by 7.8% in the fourth quarter to approximately 145,000, with GI cases returning to normalized levels and the contributions from our new acquisitions that were partially offset by lower case volumes in our pain management business. Revenues for the quarter were $610 million, 11.3% higher than the prior- year period. On a same facility basis, total revenue increased 9.6% in the fourth quarter. Looking at the components of this increase, our net revenue per case increased approximately 5%, and case volume was approximately 4% higher than the prior year period, driven by acuity mix and pricing, continued recovery of case volume from the pandemic, and favorable recruiting efforts. Turning to operating earnings. Our fourth quarter 2021 adjusted EBITDA was $114.4 million, a 26% increase from the comparable period in 2020. These results include an $11.6 million impact from CARES Act grants that were recognized in the fourth quarter of 2021, compared to $9.2 million in 2020. Year to date, we have recognized $37.9 million of CARES Act grants as grant income, translating to $25.3 million of adjusted EBITDA impact. As of December 31, 2021, we have approximately $4 million of grants deferred as a liability on our balance sheet. During the quarter, we recorded $15.1 million of transaction, integration, and acquisition costs, with a meaningful amount of this overall expense related to our acquisition and divestiture activity in the fourth quarter. As we disclosed in the third quarter of 2021, transaction, integration, and acquisition costs did not include any losses associated with our community hospital in Idaho Falls as the facility began producing positive adjusted EBITDA. Moving on to cash flow and liquidity. In November 2021, we closed on our second significantly oversubscribed equity offering of the year, resulting in net proceeds of approximately $306 million. Proceeds from this offering were partially used to fund the $185 million in acquisitions that were completed in December. We ended the quarter with a strong cash position of $390 million, which includes approximately $60 million of Medicare advanced payments. We have held these advanced payments as deferred revenue in our financial statements. Recoupment of these funds from future Medicare revenue will continue through the second quarter. Moving on to cash flows in the fourth quarter. Surgery Partners had operating cash flows of approximately $20 million. We made a $21 million payment under the tax receivable agreement, and as I mentioned, in December, we closed three deals worth $185 million. These deals have an average year one deal multiple of approximately 8x. As you've heard us discuss before, we target a range of 5x-6x credit agreement leverage. We think that range represents a good balance between maintaining an appropriate capital structure while acknowledging the significant equity value we can create through accreted deployment of capital. The company's ratio of total net debt to EBITDA at the end of the fourth quarter, as calculated under the company's credit agreement, decreased to 5.6 x. Normalizing for the impact of Medicare advanced payment funds, the ratio of total net debt to EBITDA would have been approximately 10 basis points higher. This leverage ratio was positively impacted by the equity raise in November, partially offset by our acquisitions. We expect this leverage to float in the upper 5x to lower 6 x range in the near-term future. 2022 is also a turning point for us as we expect to begin generating positive free cash flow from operations that we can redeploy. Some of the other material uses of cash include the last of the largest payments under our tax receivable agreement in December for approximately $20 million, continued funding for the Idaho Falls Community Hospital maturation, and the repayment of the final 50% of deferred payroll taxes from 2020 of $8 million. We are also expecting material cash inflows from a shareholder lawsuit settled late last year and an earn out payment from our 2020 sale of anesthesia assets, collectively worth approximately $40 million. We have further opportunity to meaningfully lower our fixed charges if we refinance our 2027 notes, which are callable at 105% in April of this year and carry a 10% coupon. Our $210 million revolver was undrawn as of December 31, 2021. As we evaluate both our cash on hand and the untapped revolver, we project that we will have sufficient liquidity to execute on the $200 million annual capital deployment goal, inclusive of the most recently completed acquisitions in January. As a reminder, the company has an appropriately flexible capital structure with no financial covenants on the term loan or our senior notes. Through the fourth quarter, our continued emphasis on expanding key service lines such as orthopedics and cardiology, targeting high-value physician recruits, and engaging in strategic rate negotiations have all continued to fuel our growth trajectory. After a strong finish to 2021 with the fourth quarter results we released this afternoon and the momentum carried into 2022, we are raising our guidance for 2022 adjusted EBITDA to a range of $370 million-$380 million. We are optimistic about 2022, but believe this range is prudent given the continuing risks associated with the COVID-19 pandemic and related labor and inflation costs, which we have successfully navigated so far. On the top line, we believe we can achieve at least $2.5 billion of revenue, representing at least 12% growth over the 2021 baseline, driven by a balance of case growth and rate growth as organic growth efforts from investments in recruitment, revenue cycle, and managed care are combined with the contributions from 2021 acquisitions, which will help overcome the impact of the phasing out of sequestration in mid-2022. At the midpoint of those ranges, our reported adjusted EBITDA margins would expand when compared to 2021 results after excluding the effects of grants from prior year results. As a reminder, our business has a natural seasonal pattern, largely driven by annual deductibles resetting for commercial payers that tend to skew our results lower in the first quarter and higher in the fourth, relatively speaking. We are projecting 2022 will have a seasonality pattern consistent with pre-pandemic levels, with first quarter underlying results representing an estimated 20% of our projected full year performance and the fourth quarter representing approximately 31%. We are confident in our organic growth model due to our consistent historical same-facility revenue growth, the opportunity to maintain and capture new share in high acuity procedures, and our ability to leverage our scale through procurement, revenue cycle, and overall workflow efficiency. Risks to our annual outlook remain the potential for more extended COVID-19 impacts and increased labor cost pressures in certain markets beyond that which we are currently contemplating. These risks are offset by our ability to deploy additional capital on accretive transactions and continued focus on managing our operating costs. As we evaluate risks versus opportunity in 2022, we are confident in our outlook and continue to see strength and momentum across multiple product lines and geographies. I am proud to join the ranks of this highly skilled and experienced management team, and to continue to support the physician partners and clinicians in our facilities that offer outstanding clinical quality and an exceptional patient experience. The fundamentals of our business are strong, with a $150 billion total addressable market and solid momentum enabling us to continue to earn our fair share of this enormous growth opportunity. With that, I'd like to turn the call back over to the operator for questions. Operator? Thank you very much, sir. Ladies and gentlemen, we will now begin the question and answer session. At this time, if you wish to ask a question, please press star and one on your telephone keypad. A confirmation tone will indicate your line is in the question queue. You may press star two if you would like to remove your question from the queue. For participants using speaker equipment, it may be necessary to pick up your handset before pressing the star keys. One moment, please, while we poll for questions. As a reminder, we request to restrict to one question and one follow-up. We have first question from the line of Brian Tanquilut with Jefferies. Please go ahead. Hey, good afternoon, guys. Congrats on a great quarter and a great year. I guess my first question for either Wayne or Eric, you know, you talked about Q4 strength, but I think it's pretty clear that Omicron had a little bit of an impact on volumes in December and January for most healthcare providers. Just wanna hear any color you can share with us in terms of what you saw during those periods in terms of the drag from that. Then the bounce back, if any that you've seen, say, in February or quarter- to- date or so far in March, and how you're thinking about kind of like volume performance around surges that you see with the virus? Hey, Brian. Thank you for the question. I think it's fair to say we all know someone who was impacted by this variant whether it be in, you know, the December- January timeframe. You know, as we think about, you know, responding to that question, we looked at it really from two lenses. One is, you know, how did the actual variant impact our patients, our surgeons or our nurses? And then separate from that was there any labor pressure as a result of that, you know, within the labor market? I'm gonna let Eric respond to both of those, and then maybe, Eric, give a little commentary of what we've seen in terms of the rebound, both at year-end as well as going into the February timeframe. Yeah. Brian, thanks for the comments too. We were certainly pleased with the way we finished the year. When you think about kind of our impact from Omicron, we certainly saw it. You know, we saw it in certain regions more than others. As we've talked about before though, and particularly with Omicron, it's been a situation where even whether it's a physician or a patient, we never cancel those cases. They're rescheduled within a relatively short period of time. We've seen pressure points. They come up, and then they quickly abate. Patients are rescheduled relatively quickly, usually within the month. Definitely within a quarter, if you think about kind of just the timeline of getting that done. What's been particularly encouraging towards the end of the year and coming into the first part of 2022 is the areas where we had seen not full recoveries. You think about ENT, pain management, some of those procedures that were slower coming back in the past, they really are coming back quite strongly. We're really encouraged by the start of the year. You know, January was somewhat affected, but clearly, we've seen that bounce back in February and actually expect our quarter to be, you know, where we expect it to be and what we've talked about. As far as labor pressure, I think Wayne pointed to, you know, how does that affect us. Clearly, when people are out sick from the short-term perspective, you have to cover them often with premium labor. That could be overtime, that could be contract labor. Typically overtime for us. You know, I just remind you on labor pressure, we have a preferred job. You think about our positions are typically positions that are elective. They're normal business hours. They don't require extended overtime. They tend to be jobs where the nurse or the clinical person can be specialized in just orthopedics, just ENT, instead of having to be covering lots of different things. Our staffing ratios quite honestly are quite a bit higher than you see in traditional acute care hospitals. We feel like, you know, the starting point's quite good. The pressure is around the edges. When we have, you know, big quarters like Q4. You know, extra labor needed when there's such high hospital usage based on Omicron, that obviously creates, you know, pressure to deal with those volume variances. The good news is that's falling down. You know, we see that falling across hospitals. We see that pressure lessening. And to be honest, within our business too, we still have opportunity m uch like in the past. The acute care industry has done to deal with, you know, nursing shortages or nursing pressures, to focus on top of license work and make sure that we're using, you know, all different levels of clinical caregivers. And so we feel quite confident we can manage through it. Again, it's been, you know, largely transient in our markets. We've seen it bounce back quickly and we're really encouraged with the start of the year and how we managed through what was definitely probably the biggest disruption period we've experienced with COVID so far. That's awesome. I guess my follow-up in your prepared remarks, you talked about the de novo strategy as well as the Privia joint venture. Just curious if you could share with us some comments on how you're addressing or how you're doing the de novos, what you're looking at there. Maybe just any other color you can share on how you thought about Privia and kinda like your entry into some sort of value-based arrangements with primary care practices such as those. I'll start and then I'm gonna ask Eric to maybe comment a little bit more on how we're expanding our de novo strategy and the Privia relationship specifically. You know, as a reminder, we made substantial investments on a de novo basis over the previous four years, and obviously Idaho Falls Community Hospital being the largest of all those de novos. We've spent a lot more time once we got those started and up and running over the last two years, focusing on them being successful during the COVID-19, you know, and all the various variants that came out. We took the foot off the pedal slightly over the last couple years to make sure that our existing de novos would be highly successful and that our physician recruitment efforts would be implemented. That being said, Eric and the team over the last, you know, I'd say eight to 12 months, have really started putting the pressure back on that next wave of de novos and where those are at. I'm gonna let Eric comment on kind of what we're seeing, and I think you'll hear more exciting things as this year goes by and then around the Privia relationship. Yeah. Thanks for that question. I think on the de novos side, I would say a couple of things. Let me first separate this. It's not a new growth prong. We typically have several de novos a year that we do. However, it's an increasingly big part of how the industry is growing. You know, if you look at the data that's out there, we think de novo capacity represents, or de novo count of centers represents about a 4% increase on an annual basis the last couple of years. So it's become a, you know, certainly a big part of the growth of our space, and it's a place we're leaning in. I would just remind you though that we've been doing this for quite some time. On the de novo side too, what I would tell you is we've been really focused on this strategy. We have a number of exciting opportunities to increase our pace there. We think de novos can be a you know double-digit part of our center growth over the next several years, and we're leaning in to make sure that we're positioning ourselves to do that, particularly as cardiology and orthopedics come out of hospitals. Sometimes it's easier than in a single specialty hospital to start with a very specific purpose-built facility. That is something that we're quite excited about. I think, Brian, to follow back up on your question around Privia and value-based care, I always start my value-based care discussion with reminding everyone we're value-based care within the fee-for-service world, right? The simplest way to think about us is in the current world, move patients to our site, we'll save you 20%-50%. You know, I think that's a story that continues to resonate. With that said, there is a growing amount of what I refer to as payviders, and you hear them called that, where they're really focused on providing care, but also really aligning reimbursement, particularly for primary care, around the most value-based or value effective treatment. You know, we as an independent operator, the only national independent operator, are really well-positioned to partner with organizations that are like-minded around how we drive efficiency in the healthcare system. When you think about Privia in Montana, as we mentioned, it's not gonna be a game changer this year. You think about this model where historically we have relied almost exclusively around, you know, recruiting the best physicians and having them with their reputations, bringing patients to our facilities because of the cost, quality, and value proposition. The idea of being able to align with a like-minded primary care group that's growing across the state, that's really trying to drive value and make sure people are taken care of in the right set of care is quite attractive. You know, we see opportunities over the longer term in Montana. Certainly in other states where, you know, we work, whether it's Privia or other value-based care providers, where we have an aligned kind of footprint or can build an aligned footprint. We think we're extremely well positioned to do that as the independent short stay national operator. There'll be more to come on that. It is certainly a newer development that allows us to directly tie to kind of the beginning of the referral stream to change in a way that, you know, if people are incentivized to really drive value, you know, we're a natural choice. Excited about that. Yeah, maybe last thing I would add is just this. We've been working over the last 12 months on opportunities to accelerate the de novo window. You know, as we've mentioned, it's usually 12-18 months before you see positive EBITDA. We think there's opportunities with the right partnerships and the right individuals to actually accelerate that so that the EBITDA value creation occurs much sooner than the typical digestive period that we've seen in the past. More to come, but we're excited about a number of things we have in the hopper right now, and hopefully we'll be able to share more in the next quarter or two. Awesome. Thanks, guys. Thank you. We have next question from the line of Jason Cassorla with Citi. Please go ahead. Great. Thanks, guys. Good evening. Just wanted to turn to your 2022 revenue guidance. We call it over 12% growth. Can you help frame the attribution of that growth between organic, just considering the rollover of COVID and maybe the pent-up demand argument, and then maybe the contribution you're expecting from deals that you completed for 2021, just so we understand? Thanks. Maybe, and Dave, feel free to chime in with any of the specifics here. But I would generally say we are targeting high single-digit, low double-digit for the organic portion of revenue growth. Mm-hmm. If you think about capital deployment, again, if we average around $200 million, use a mid-year convention though, for the average deployment timeline, you can kind of back into the delta there. You know, I'd remind you that our, you know, our revenue growth is on an absolute basis. We didn't bifurcate when we gave the at least 12%. We didn't bifurcate out the government money that we're covering. We didn't bifurcate out the sequestration headwind that we're dealing with. So from our perspective, the underlying growth rate is actually greater than 12% when you consider that we're actually overcoming those headwinds, and then of course growing on top of that. Ultimately, think about it as more, you know, high single- digit, low double- digit organic, and then the delta through M&A. Yep. I mean, I would agree with you, Wayne. You know, as you look at what we've experienced over this past couple of years with same-store growth, especially what we just reported this year, we have a good mix of both case and rate growth. That trend we expect to continue. Clearly a good contribution coming from our acquisition activity. It's a fairly balanced way that we're looking at the growth plan for next year. Got it. Okay. Thanks. Maybe just as my follow-up. Just wanted to go to the physician recruitment engine you have at Surgery. Just in your prepared remarks, you discussed 13% growth year-over-year in physician adds for 2021. Is that how we should think about targeted growth moving forward, just given the focus there? And maybe just help out in terms of what kind of growth you need to help offset the natural attrition of physicians that you noted in your prepared remarks. Thanks. Probably the best way to think about it is that we average around 95% retention in our physician base. Now, that varies between those that are owners with us versus those that may be somewhat transient, either returning or relocating, et cetera. If you, as you generally think, you know, average of averages, we retain somewhere around that 95 percentile. All things being equal, you've got to be able to recruit at least 5% new, you know, physician base to recover those that retire, relocate, you know, or just choose to change professions. What we generally try to target is basically replenishing that hole each year. Of course, we would like to see a level of growth on top of that. I don't know that I would say we're always gonna be 13% a year because you know who knows where this will end up. I would tell you that we've been very heavily focused on high-acuity procedures, and I've been very pleased with the level that the team's done there. There's multiple specialties that we are actively pursuing still, whether it be ophthalmology, GI, et cetera. I still think we will be double-digit growth. I would say we've aligned the team and their incentives around recruiting physicians and the right doctors so that we'll be aligned around that double-digit growth. Eric, anything you wanna add? No, I think you've hit the key points. I think that we have a very experienced team that has used a data-driven approach to drive this growth. It's every year we're making gains. We're making gains not only on procedures, but the type of procedures, attracting the right docs in every market. You know, we do, you know, I guess what I will say is we actually continue to see our pipeline strengthen. This is not something that's slowing down. You know, our pipeline is as strong, entering this year, as it's ever been. Actually, I'd say stronger than it's ever been. We look at the opportunities that remain on that as a, you know, obviously a big part of our organic growth. When we go out and acquire a new facility, it's one of the big value propositions we bring, is being really thoughtful around how do we market to and gain traction with the most important physicians in that community that can drive value in our facilities. We've executed upon that really well, and I don't expect that to change. Great. Thanks for the color. Of course. Thank you. We have next question from the line of Kevin Fischbeck with Bank of America. Please go ahead. All right, great. Thanks. I guess the first question, I think Wayne said that your guidance includes headwinds from labor and supply cost pressure from the pandemic. Is there any way to size those out? And when we think about the impact that maybe those had in 2021, is the CARES recognition a good proxy for that, or is there some other way to think about that? Yeah. I mean, you know, ultimately, we've had this debate internally, right? We've been trying to wrap our hands around, like how big is it? How do you measure it? Ultimately, you know, CARES grants were there to subsidize for where you had shortfalls and shortcomings, whether it be from labor pressure or timing on volume. You know, I don't know if that full $25 million is completely the right proxy. I'd probably say it's a little bit south of that. I would say that, you know, it's a reasonable proxy to say that we've had to overcome that entire headwind in our revised guidance, and our updated guidance. We've had to overcome the sequestration as well. I would view it like that. If you look at just overall cost, we're up about 100 basis points, you know, if you compare to last year at this time on kind of the labor headwind. Now we're closer to the 2019 levels, but we're kind of investing through this. I would use at this point, I'd probably use a little bit south of the grants as a proxy because some of that grant related to the prior year, meaning 2020 that rolled into 2021, as we were figuring out the rules that CMS was publishing. South of that number, but obviously a reasonable proxy. Yeah. I would just say. If you're thinking about kind of how we thought about that rolling into next year, clearly in the second part of the year, we've, you know, Wayne talked about this point, but our current performance is basically the same as a percentage of revenue as it was in 2019. It's up over 2020. It's even to kind of over the prior month if you look at or over the prior quarter. But we know part of the reason we've been able to do that is through some of the efficiencies we've gained through COVID. So we've outrun some of that just simply by being more efficient. We have kept that, you know, kind of higher rate in there for a period this year because we still think we're gonna have noise. When we say it includes that, we certainly have, you know, based on our best knowledge and understanding how we have to manage through this on a transitional basis. You know, there is some of that in there. But our expectation again is that, you know, this is an area we can really manage through. Number one, because we have a great job that we tend to retain people in. Number two, the pressure is coming off kind of that floating nursing capacity. Number three, much like the industry has done over the years, we will continue to look for ways where we have pressured physicians to make sure we're working top of license and adjusting our mix to meet that need. Okay, that's helpful. I guess, as far as the managed care negotiations go, you keep seeming to be benefiting from these sort of strategic rate negotiations. Where are we in that process? How much longer do we have to go? Would we be thinking that we'll be talking about this still in two or three years, or is this gonna wrap up sooner than that? Yeah. I think we still have a fair amount of a ways to go there. We are still a value player within our space. We have certainly, you know, I think made a lot of progress over the last couple years in making sure we're getting paid fairly in our more core markets. Now the real opportunity comes for some of these more, what I would say, more interesting strategic discussions on how do we make sure that we're partnering with physicians to make sure our physicians are getting the professional fee incentive they should to ensure they go to the high- value place, m aking sure that we are contracted ahead of our facility expansions when it comes to service lines, and m aking sure where we can, we are sharing in some of the savings we create. I think that's gonna be the real opportunity for us over the next several years. We're certainly not, in any way, shape, or form, a price leader in our markets. We still have plenty of opportunity to partner. We have a very strong value proposition as an independent player in this space, and that continues to resonate. Kevin, I remind you when we started this journey four years ago, you know, we were just building out the team then around managed care and contracting and how we wanted to approach it. As you know, most contractual arrangements are generally three years in length. Even if we were able to hit the ground running, you know, as of 01/01/2019, best case, you know, we got an initial bite at all the contracts and where they needed to move to. As you know, these contracts have about 1/3 of them renew each year over the three-year period. I would say knowing the trajectory that we're on, I don't think we've hit the top of the mountain yet. I think we still got another three to five y ears of climbing to get to the top of the mountain. At that point, you know, we think we'll have even further scale that should drive even more value for the system that we would have another round. I would say maybe we're in the fourth inning, you know, at this point. We're not in the first inning anymore, but we're a long way away still from the value creation from contract negotiation. Yeah. Kevin, just as a reminder, as we move into higher acuity services, I think the inning rolls back. I mean, I would just point out to you that, you know, you start thinking about the procedures we're doing more of today, hips, knees, spine, cardiology. These are the types of procedures that prepare us for, you know, six-figure savings per procedure. That actually really changes our value prop in a way that allows us to rethink and renegotiate our partnerships because we're gonna drive so much value together. Like, I don't think it's. If I gave you an inning from where I thought we were gonna be initially, I would probably say fourth or fifth. Ultimately, as higher acuity procedures are proven out to be safe in our space, as CMS has leaned in, I think that opportunity has gotten larger for partnership and larger for ways to make sure that we're aligning on creating value for the system in a very accretive way for Surgery Partners. All right, great. Thank you. Thank you. We have next question from the line of Sarah James with Barclays. Please go ahead. Hi, yeah, this is Steve Braun on for Sarah. Hey, Steve. Hey, how's it going? Good. Just a question on, I guess like, the acquisitions and the multiple that you guys cited at 8x. Was that like the reason for the 8x multiple? I guess like the last number we had seen was 7.5x was the average multiple you had paid since 2018. Was there any reason that the multiple may have stepped up a bit? Was that like pertaining to the, you know, maybe the three deals that were closed in December? Yeah, it's a great question. If you think about multiples, they vary on a range that can be literally as low as 5x to as high as, you know, 9x, sometimes even closer to 10x. It's a function of the quality of the asset, as well as the specialty in which they're in. If you think about historically, if you go all the way back to 2018, that was when we were pruning the asset, repositioning the book into the high-growth specialties. Certain assets we were getting a lower multiple on, others a little bit higher. If you look at our more recent acquisitions, they are very heavy in the MSK and cardio lines of service. When you think about those, they generally have a slightly higher multiple than other specialties that have already moved a significant portion into an outpatient setting. All in, around an 8x multiple on a trailing 12-month pre-synergies. If you think about, as Eric said in the opening comments, we usually take about a turn off on these things after we get on a synergized basis. I think you'll see multiples continue to hover in the 7x-9x average range. Mm-hmm. Specialty is really the big driver. Got it. Thanks for that. I guess like on the other one, how much of like, I guess, the revenue guide for 2022, how much of the inorganic growth is taking into consideration the three deals versus like incremental deals that you may do in 2022? We do not count transactions as organic until they've gotten through one full year of maturity. None of those transactions will count towards our organic growth model that we just completed in December. Those count as M&A. Our organic growth is a very pure growth. We've got to own the asset for a year, and at that point, we then look at what is the value creation that we create after the one-year mark. Got it. Yeah, no, sorry, I was saying when you were dissecting the pieces of the growth algorithm, I was saying how much of that M&A was factored into like the inorganic piece that you had talked about. I think on like maybe June. I would just clarify a little bit. Yeah, as we think about going into this year, we clearly have capital still to deploy. You know, we think there is additional upside for us as we put that to work. We don't try to build way ahead on that. We have assumptions that we have on what any given year will look like. The reality of it is, as we go through the course of this year and we deploy capital, we have no reason we shouldn't. We've got a strong pipeline that continues to build, that there are certainly opportunities for us to exceed, the range we talked about today. Yeah, I think for modeling, think of it as we said. We target at least $200 million. Use a mid-year convention and use roughly an 8x multiple as a rounding factor. That's what we would use to say that's how you back into what kind of value creation. To the extent that we can accelerate the timeline relative to the mid-year convention, that is additive to the outlook. To the extent that we do more than $200 million, it could be additive to the outlook. A lot of moving parts here, but we would say the pipeline is as robust as it's ever been. Yeah. One thing I didn't clarify earlier, I wanna make sure it doesn't get lost on this call, is we talked about the de novo opportunities for us going forward. That is separate and apart from our normal $200 million plan, right? If we're gonna do our traditional M&A. We feel good about our ability to do that. We have a great pipeline. Separate and apart from that, we see this additional growth opportunity in de novos that we think also can be quite accretive to our future. Okay, great. Thank you. Thanks. Thank you. We have next question from the line of Tao Qiu with Stifel. Please go ahead. Hey, good evening. I'm just trying to understand the revenue cadence for the year. You mentioned that you expect 1Q revenue to be 20% of the full year. At the same time, sounds like there are delayed procedures that you are rescheduling pretty quickly. The experience might be, you know, more similar to what we saw in 2021, where 1Q was actually higher. How should we think about the impact of pending demand improvement in staffing in terms of the impact on the first quarter? Well, Tao, thanks for the question. First off, we're not giving quarterly guidance on the revenue piece just yet, but you're absolutely right. We do look at the seasonality of our adjusted earnings to look somewhat consistent with what we've seen on a pre-pandemic level. As we've looked at those cases that might be impacted by Omicron, we're still looking at those things inside the quarter. Anything that might have been delayed isn't being delayed for a long period of time, which is why we feel comfortable with that overall earnings pattern still remaining somewhat consistent. Yeah, we actually are kind of regressing to our norm this year a little bit. I mean, certainly we're gonna have some recovery in some places, which is offset by some disruption. The reality of it is we're getting back to what we see as our new normal, which is, you know, back to this really fast growth pace. When you think about the seasonality of our business, particularly as many of you know have covered us a long time, you know that fourth quarter is a big quarter. Mm-hmm. It typically is 31%-32% of our revenues. Q1, as we talked about earlier, tends to be 19%-20%. You know, we just wanted to make sure that, you know, we pointed that out. Yeah, I think part of that mix, of course, is the impact of deductibles on patients that are commercial- based, that will tend to bring those cases in a little bit later in the year and the reimbursement of those. So part of it is just natural, as you do get back to, again, those pre-pandemic levels, which is probably a better comparable or comparison for you, rather than the past couple of years, clearly. Got you. I think you talk about there's a $4 million deferred liability from the grants income. Is that including the adjusted EBITDA guidance you guys gave? No, it is not. As you know, kind of relatively small, the grant income that gets recorded is all subject to the applicability of the facility itself that received it and the nature of the grant that was received. A large part of that $4 million that's still on the balance sheet was received in the fourth quarter grants. We just look carefully at that. It will be dependent upon losses that were incurred at that particular facility and then how it may be used across the rest of the portfolio based on actual COVID related losses. More to come on that, but unclear how that might be pushed into the year, if at all. We have no more assumptions around receiving grants. That's in the guidance. We like to view that money on the balance sheet as a hedge, if we have a particular facility that is impacted and that it would apply against that facility. Very similar to what you saw in Q4, we manage our business without those grants. That's our job. That's why we had such a strong Q4 and that we were able to not only execute, but we were able to recognize many grants in markets that were impacted by Omicron and by the wage pressures. No, we're not assuming any of it in our guidance and view it as either a hedge or potential upside. Understood. Great. If I may squeeze in one more. I think, Dave, you mentioned that you're comfortable taking leverage to high- 5s and low- 6s. Is it fair to say that there's no need to kind of raise equity capital near term given the $20 million capital deployment target? I'm sorry, say that last part of your question again? Given the capital deployment target of $200 million, you know, just doing my math here, it seems like there's no need to raise equity capital near term. Is that a fair characterization? Thank you. It's a very fair. Yeah, very fair characterization. We have more than ample capital, $390 million consolidated cash, $210 million undrawn revolver. I do not see a need for us to raise more capital. I would remind everybody that we are now gonna be cash flow positive, that our business north of $315 million in EBITDA moves us into cash flow positive territory. Around $0.65 of every dollar above $315 converts to positive cash flow. On top of that, as you know, we have some debt that we can call with a 10% interest rate, and the ability to refinance that will also give us even further flexibility of improving our cash flow position. I would say we feel like we are in a very strong position without having to raise additional capital. Thank you. Thank you. We have next question from the line of Gary Taylor with Cowen. Please go ahead. Hi. Good afternoon or good evening. I'll have to go back to the transcript. I was gonna ask a question about that free cash flow, and Dave was ripping through a lot of numbers pretty quickly. Wanted to ask, what does maintenance CapEx recurring, you know, look like in 2022 or kinda go forward now given your current portfolio? Yeah, sure. This is Dave, Gary. I'm happy to walk you through those numbers again, if you need to, but you're right, it's all kind of laid out pretty nicely in those talking points. CapEx for us last year was somewhat of a normalized level for us. I think we reported just shy of $57 million or just around $57 million of CapEx procedures. As we look forward on a normal maintenance basis as well as, you know, the growth that Eric was talking about with regard to de novo investments that are necessary, that's a good number to use. Got it. My second question, just wanted to ask about supply cost trend. Looked pretty good this quarter. I mean, for obvious reasons, supply cost per procedure tracks pretty closely with your revenue growth per procedure, especially as you've done more higher acuity procedures. This quarter we actually had supply costs per case down about 0.5 point. You had pretty decent revenue per procedure growth so it's a pretty wide gap versus what we're used to sort of seeing, from you. Is there anything about the mix of cases this quarter or, you know, anything else driving that performance? It's a great question. This is Eric. I'll start and maybe let Dave give more detail, but I would say high level, you did see some return of the lower acuity. You know, we started to see pain come back a little bit in late in the quarter, and certainly those are high margin, lower supply cost procedures. In general, we've got a supply chain team that's done a fantastic job of staying close to our large distributors, large suppliers, and we've been very proactive on managing this. We, you know, in some cases, that means we have to work with our physicians to change preference. In other cases, it's just simply a matter of making sure that we, you know, carry enough stock to live through disruptions. In general, you know, we feel like our supply chain progress and what we're driving there is sustainable and hopefully we can build upon it. I don't know what Dave you would add to that. Yeah. I think the other two points to consider. One. Fourth quarter does have higher mix of commercial business in there, so you're gonna see a different revenue mix than you see, which is gonna impact that metric just a little bit. Also, you know, as you look at the fourth quarter compared to, say, for example, fourth quarter of 2019, that might be a better comparison than your sequential, as you return to somewhere normal. Eric's absolutely right. As we talk about supply chain and as we have worked with our vendors and at least the key suppliers in there, we are talking about future trends, and, you know, a current view of kinda how long we think that's gonna persist for. You know, much like the labor trends, we do see them in pockets, and we also can deploy different strategies, as Eric was mentioning. Either buying in advance of some of those things, taking advantage of stock, also finding, you know, alternatives that are reasonable for our physicians, as a way for us to kinda manage them. Much like our labor pressure, we look very, very closely at ways we can manage that cost to help offset the inflation factor there. Got it. Thank you. Thank you. We have next question from the line of Whit Mayo with SVB Leerink. Please go ahead. Hey, thanks. Good afternoon. I just wanted to go back for a second to the 13% increase in the new physicians onboarded this year. I don't think this is a hugely significant number yet, but can you comment on what percent of the same store growth in 2021 may have come from that group of physicians? I guess really the broader question is reflecting back on 2019 or 2020, when you look at the various cohorts and how those new physicians are performing and the level of productivity that they're having in your centers now. Yes, this is Eric. I'll take a shot at that, Whit. Thanks for the question. We've talked about this before when we think about the cohorts and how they progress over time. We've looked at this kind of year-over-year for quite some time. I t continues to hold true, which is typically the business in the second half of the year is up at least, I think it's 50% higher, or it's actually, yeah, double, often in year two. Typically, we double that business in year two. It continues to have a growth in year three. This is one of those, you do have to look cohort by cohort. If you think about the 13% in a given year, it's actually not gonna be driving as much as the cohort from the prior year is in year two. It's certainly a big part of that growth story. As we've gotten more refined on that, it's kind of a, you know, it builds upon itself, especially as we have, you know, increasingly been working on making sure we have really high retention, obviously of our partners, and we have good backfill plans. This all becomes additive. You know, I mentioned earlier our pipeline is strong as it's ever been, with our physicians that are in the queue going through our recruitment process. Ultimately, you know, it builds upon itself. It roughly doubles in year two. Again, with higher acuity specialists we've been recruiting, it makes a bigger difference. I couldn't tell you off the top of my head the percentage of our same store growth that's there. Clearly, new physicians and that it also mixes together a bit with new service lines. You know, as we add a joint program, as we add a cardiology program, those two are kind of connected. Same with robotics. You know, it'd be hard to just pull that apart and say it's just new physicians. Part of it's new equipment, part of it's new service lines. It's certainly a big part of that organic growth piece. Maybe to take Eric's comment, though, and try to put a little bit of color around the idea that, you know, a typical year one physician, again, remember, some physicians get recruited in January. Some get recruited in December. When we look at average of averages, if you were to look back to kinda 2019, 2020, 2021, those are the first three years that this team had the ability to kinda look at how a vintage has evolved, right? The typical vintage in year one is in the $30 million-$35 million in revenue. As Eric said, it doubles by the second year, and then it grows from there. When a vintage gets fully, you know, out there, you're starting to get more to, like, that $100 million run rate over time. What's important to recognize with that is if you think about $2 billion of revenue and you think about just, you know, about half of our organic growth is coming from these recruitment efforts. Now, of course, some of that then is offsetting the docs you lose to retirement, to et cetera. So, you know, it's not as simple as does that group always give us 5% growth. But what you have to look at it with that lens is that it's generally, though, a pretty solid contributor to that mid-single-digit growth that is there to both cover those docs that leave plus add to our growth. As Eric said, we have so many other initiatives then, which is the mix of what we're bringing in, the robotics to expand even existing procedures with existing doctors. When we talk about that is literally just brand-new doctors that have never used our facilities. Yeah, no, that makes sense. I think the punchline is it should increase our visibility into sustaining that level of growth. My last question is simply around Idaho Falls. I'm not sure that there was an update around the performance of that facility and maybe just what the expectations are for its contribution this year. Anything you could share would be super helpful. Yeah, sure, Whit. I can take that. First off, let me just remind you. Idaho Falls was reflected below the line for all of its existence up through the second quarter of this year. When it turned profitable is when we moved it above the line and included it in our earnings. In the past, we've talked about the revenue contribution from that facility, as those numbers were kinda put above the line for a period of time. We're not disclosing that anymore, because the overall business is now kind of in there. You can assume that growth trajectory that we've seen in the first part of the year has continued. It is part of the system that we have up in the Idaho Falls community market, which does enjoy kind of the typical growth that we've seen across the rest of the portfolio. It's fair to assume that revenue trajectory is gonna continue to grow. The other point I would make is we still feel confident in the long-term value associated with Idaho Falls Community Hospital. For the time being, until we get there, you will see that being included as an addition to our credit agreement adjusted EBITDA, which we still have in there, at approximately $20 million. Yeah. Well, I just reaffirm what Dave said. This is, I mean, this is a great market for us. We love our position in the marketplace. This hospital is a value player in that marketplace. It was certainly delayed by launching a new hospital during COVID, especially a hospital that, you know, is going to be a trauma center that's gonna have a fair amount of cardiology over time. When you're doing that in the middle of an ED-impacted period, starting a hospital obviously kind of a little bit behind where we would've expected it to be. We were also delayed by just trying to get people out to license things and trying to get, you know, everyone was distracted. We believe that this facility is going to be a fantastic facility. We still have great confidence in it. It's a market we like, we like our positioning, and ultimately, it's just been delayed by COVID. Continue to be excited about Idaho Falls. Can I just get clarification on that? Sure. Dave said that there's $20 million of add backs to the credit agreement, and it normally that implies that there you know are losses. Is this a facility that you expect to be a positive EBITDA contributor this year? I just wanna make sure that I'm you know thinking about this right. Yeah, Whit, this is Wayne. Let me clarify that. It is a positive contributor to EBITDA. It will be a positive contributor for 2022. We are expecting it to contribute an additional $20 million in the out years. That's why we're including it in the credit agreement. Okay. View it all as it's all additive, meaning we are not off track. We started slower than we had expected 'cause we opened it up in the middle of COVID, but it has already turned a positive EBITDA midyear this year, and that trajectory is not slowing down. We would expect going into the out years an additional $20 million of EBITDA growth on top of what we're projecting for this year. Okay. Thank you so much. Thank you. We take the last question from the line of Ben Hendrix with RBC. Please go ahead. Hey, thanks, guys, for squeezing me in here at the end. Just hoping you could provide a little bit more information or a little more detail around the cardio opportunity as the next wave of high acuity growth. Maybe some, specifically some details around the timeline. You know, is that gonna ramp up as fast as MSK has? Any detail you can provide around that. Sure, Ben. This is Eric. Thanks for the question. It's certainly a service line we're very excited about just because of the value creation opportunity given how much expense it drives in the traditional acute care world from a patient care standpoint. I would say I don't know that I expect it to move quite as fast as orthopedics. Although I'm being surprised sometimes at the pace that we're seeing. You know, we expect to launch, I believe it's seven to nine new programs this coming year in our ASCs, meaning cardiac rhythm management programs. When I talk about cardiology, I would just think about it as kind of an evolution. If you think about our current facilities, 60% of them have the fluoroscopy capability needed to do basic cardiac rhythm management, which is, think about that as pacemakers, lead extractions. Y ou know, some of the more basic procedures. There is definitely a growing interest among specialists to have cath lab procedures, yeah, available in outpatient world. Certainly, cardiologists have not had as much exposure as what orthopedic surgeons did to ASCs necessarily. We're seeing a tremendous interest, and we think that's, again, gonna be part of the de novo story because a lot of these facilities can be efficiently built as de novo cardiac facilities. We're seeing more show up in our pipeline, and we're certainly seeing more on the recruitment side. When you think about our pipeline, it opens up a whole new group of physicians, whether that's EP vascular cardiology with procedures that can come into our space. What's great about it is when you think about our TAM, it's part of that next $60 billion that's moving out of facilities, tends to be a place, you know, where the acute care world has really nice margins in cardiology. We tend to provide a very, very attractive value proposition while still having really attractive margins. It's a place we're excited to grow in. We will do it kind of at a pace that makes sense. We wanna make sure, obviously, we do a fantastic job on quality. We're building those things into place. We see this as much like orthopedics. It's gonna be one of those things. We started orthopedics in 2017. We grew that, we mentioned in our prepared remarks,. We grew that by 50% over that period. I would expect something very similar in cardiology. I don't think that number is at all out of the realm. Now, again, you're starting from a little bit lower end. But the growth prospects there are tremendous, and there is growing interest. Now, a little bit different in this timeframe than orthopedics. When orthopedics first started, cardiology is a heavily employed specialty. In certain markets, you know, those contracts tend to be three years. They're not necessarily happily employed, but heavily employed. We do see opportunity for disruption, especially as some of these centers get up, prove out the case. We're excited to be one of the leaders in helping make that transition happen and creating a bunch of value for the healthcare system. Thank you for that. It's a great color. Just finally, is there any risk to that growth from a regulatory perspective? I just ask because of the kind of vacillation we've seen among CMS, kind of adding, taking names on and taking names off of the outpatient or inpatient only list. Thanks. Yeah. Appreciate the question. I just as a little bit of a baseline on cardiology. I've made this argument a lot, which is, I don't know, it was 10 or 15 years ago that hospitals began doing interventional cardiology procedures and stenting PCIs without open heart backup. Just putting this in perspective, I think it took CMS 10 or 15 years to get comfortable. The reality of it is these patients often go home within 24 hours today. They have for a long period of time. There's been a lot of data backing up the efficacy of these procedures. I think CMS was very thoughtful on the procedures they took off the inpatient only list. Or they put back on, I should say. As we've talked about before, net-net, that actually was a positive for us with our surgical hospital balance. It wasn't anything we did many procedures of. But they were also very deliberate on leaving ortho, you know, hips and knees and leaving cardiology, one, because the data backs it up from a safety standpoint, and two, because the tremendous value creation and actually better patient experience. You know, we actually don't see risk there. You know, they've looked at that thoroughly. They've left the things on that, you know, they feel really comfortable with. This is one of those. I actually, like I said, I think this could have come off, in my opinion, years earlier. In fact, a lot of commercial patients on the cardiology side, there are a number of quite busy outpatient cardiac centers on the commercial side that have been out there for a number of years. Data is very compelling as far as safety and efficacy. We'll clearly want to make sure we're, you know, going through all of the appropriate check marks to make sure we provide as good or better care than anywhere else, and that's what we do with all of our service lines. But no, I don't see this as one that's going to go back the other way. Thank you. Thank you. Hello. Ladies and gentlemen. Yes, sir. Yeah. I was gonna say, I appreciate everyone's questions today, and I just wanna make sure as we conclude, I do wanna take a chance to say thank you to our over 10,000 colleagues and our over 4,600 physicians for their many contributions. Surgery Partners collectively serves over 600,000 patients each year and thousands of patients each day in what are often their most vulnerable moments. We take the trust and faith of our communities, patients, physician partners, and colleagues placing in us incredibly seriously. We are truly privileged to make a positive difference in so many people's lives each day. I continue to be energized and humbled by the opportunity to lead this company as we work to deliver on our mission to enhance patient quality of life through partnership. Our company is clearly part of the solution to the many challenges facing our nation's health system, and I'm very proud of the significant value we are creating for all of our stakeholders. As a preferred partner for operating short stay surgical facilities across the U.S., it is the daily contributions of our colleagues, physicians, all of our partners that enable that success, and I couldn't be more proud of the team and how they've managed through what's been a very, very difficult period of time, and couldn't be more excited about where we're heading as a company. Thank you so much for your time and questions today. That concludes our comments.