Company: EHC
Filing Date: 2025-02-28
Form Type: 10-K
Source: 0000785161-25-000009
Chunk: 93

Company: Encompass Health Corp
Filing Date: 2025-02-28
Form: 10-K
Item: Item 1
Chunk 93
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 lower lengths of stay, compared to alternative sites of care. We believe our outcomes and quality of care data have helped drive significant improvement in the payments we receive from Medicare Advantage payors.

Given the significant number of stroke patients in need of post-acute care, we will continue working to build our stroke market share. As of December 31, 2024, 143 of our 166 hospitals held stroke-specific certifications that required us to demonstrate effective use of evidence-based clinical practice guidelines to manage and optimize stroke care and an organized approach to performance measurement and evaluation of clinical outcomes. 

We will continue to develop and implement post-acute solutions that allow us to apply our clinical expertise, large post-acute datasets, electronic medical record technologies, and strategic partnerships to drive improved patient outcomes and lower the cost of care across the entire post-acute episode.

We will seek to expand efforts and initiatives to recruit and retain a qualified clinical workforce. For additional discussion of some of these initiatives, see the “Human Capital Management” section below. 

We will continue to install in our hospitals a hemodialysis system with which we are now able to provide inpatient dialysis to our patients without relying on third-parties. Historically, our patients have received dialysis from third-party vendors, either onsite or offsite as available, often resulting in interruptions to their therapy schedules. With this new onsite hemodialysis system, we can provide our patients dialysis without interrupting therapy or requiring patient travel, which lowers our cost of treatment and improves patient satisfaction. 

•Capital Structure. We seek to maintain balance sheet flexibility, consider opportunistic refinancings and augment returns from investments in operations with shareholder distributions via common stock dividends and repurchases of our common stock. Our debt portfolio is concentrated in long-dated fixed-rate debt. Our free cash flow is the primary source of funding for the considerable investment in our de novo and bed addition growth plans. As an additional source of liquidity, we can access our $1 billion revolving credit facility of which $944 million was available for borrowing as of December 31, 2024. Our strong balance sheet as well as our leverage and liquidity profiles mitigate exposure to interest rate volatility and near-term refinancing risks.

For additional discussion of our strategic priorities as well as progress toward our priorities in 2024, including operating results, growth, and shareholder distributions, and our business outlook, see Item 7, Management’s Discussion and Analysis of Financial Condition and Results of Operations, “Executive Overview,” “Results of Operations,” and “L