Dallas-based Tenet Healthcare is not altering its business strategy in the face of industry policy uncertainty emanating from Washington, the system’s CEO Saum Sutaria, MD, said on the company’s April 29 earnings call.
“We will steadily execute on our growth strategies with consistent capital investment and continued demonstration of our strong operating capabilities,” Dr. Sutaria said, “We see significant opportunity for growth, which we believe translates into attractive free cash flow generation that we can deploy across our discussed priorities to generate value for shareholders.”
Dr. Sutaria’s comment came as the health system posted first-quarter earnings and cash flows “well ahead” of its leaders’ expectations.
“In summary, we’ve had a strong start to the year based on fundamental growth and cost management,” he said on the call. “We are executing effectively on our growth strategy with an intense focus on serving our patients and delivering value with our physician partners.”
Tenet is contingency planning, but Dr. Sutaria said it is low on the priority list “because we still believe that our platform can receive and accept all patients that need care, and do it in an accretive manner.”
“If there is some shock that comes out of Washington, obviously [contingency planning] may move up in terms of our list, but it is not there right now.”
