Question-and-Answer Session
Operator
(Operator Instructions) Your first question comes from the line of Steven Silver. Please go ahead, sir.
Kent Thiry
Steven? Is your mute on, Steven? Operator, perhaps we go on to the next one and come back to him.
Operator
Absolutely, of course, next question comes from the line of Gary Lieberman.
Gary Lieberman - Wachovia
Thanks, good evening. Looks like you had some pretty good facility growths. Can you comment on Texas? You’d noted before that had been a bit of an issue was getting new facilities up and has that cleared up at all?
Kent Thiry
The short answer, it is cleared up, some and/or continuing to work at to the get it cleared up the rest of the way. We’re neither optimistic nor pessimistic the fact that we made progress is encouraging. The fact that there’s still a bunch sitting there is a little depressing and so we’re on it working and leading an industry coalition.
Gary Lieberman - Wachovia
Okay. Any more color? Is it just that they’ve actually hired some people to assign to the project, or what exactly has cleared it up to the extent that it’s been cleared up?
Kent Thiry
I don’t know the details anymore. I know the details from a few states, but I don’t know which details pertain to which states. In some cases it means, they’ve hired extra people. In some cases it means, that we’re paying for the surveys. In other cases, it just means that they got enough letters that they reprioritized themselves. So, it’s kind of a mixed bag of solutions depending on the situation. There’s no one silver bullet that’s going to solve it in every state.
Rich Whitney
Gary, on the issue overall, just to give you a sense, we’re pretty much in the same spot that we were last quarter in terms of the overall number that are delayed. However, I’ll say at this point, we’re do you down to somewhere around 15 that are in the category of having been waiting longer than six months, and the rest of them are more recently constructed centers.
So there has been some progress in getting some of these centers certified, but the extended time that it’s taking means that the states are just not keeping up with us in terms of the number of new centers we’re putting into the pipeline to be certified. So that’s generally, overall, obviously in target states like Texas it’s a bit more difficult.
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