Question-and-Answer Session
Operator
(Operator Instructions) Your first question comes from Pito Chickering from Deutsche Bank.
Pito Chickering - Deutsche Bank Securities
Looking at the contract areas business in 2008, so stepping back a little bit, your same store growth is pretty extraordinary. I was wondering if you could give some details as to exactly why it was so strong during 2008 and I think you’re projecting a little bit for slower growth in 2009, but just give us more feeling on what happened in 2008 and sort of where that can go in 2009.
John Short Ph.D.
We’d like to believe a lot of it was the fact that the clinical programming that we’re putting in place as well as providing access to therapists to our clients really took hold in 2008, coupled with increased productivity so we could see more patients as a result of especially completing the integration of Symphony in that year.
The reason why we toned it down in 2009 is because historically we’ve grown more closely in the 4% to 6% range than we've grown in the 12% to 14% range. We would love to be pleasantly surprised in 2009, but for the time being, we’re going with history.
Pito Chickering - Deutsche Bank Securities
Looking to 2009 are you facing any additional therapy shortages or are you guys comfortable with the current staffing in the business right now?
John Short Ph.D.
We continue to experience a therapy shortage. The good news is it seems to be lessening. Our vacancies are down. Our time to sell is down. Our turnover is down. So, I think the silver lining to the current economic situation is that the labor markets have softened and we’re going to try and take full advantage of that by filling as many of our vacancies as possible and retaining as many of our people as possible so we don’t go through the retraining costs of new hires.
Our campus hiring initiative has also continued to blossom. We did over 500 campus hires in 2008. We’re looking to do about 600 campus hires in 2009, so we think we’ve got the model in place to handle the growth we’re talking about.
Pito Chickering - Deutsche Bank Securities
Okay and looking at the greater Peoria, LTAC opening in the third quarter, can you give us some feeling for what the LTAC start up losses absorbed were during 2008 on Northland and if that holster of the comparable grant are different. Comparable for Peoria and kind of what lessons you guys learned during the LTAC start up process.
- To read the full transcript on Seeking Alpha, click here »
