A Letter From Jon Rousseau – 2022Q1

 April 12, 2022

To: Our Team Members, Clients, Patients, Families, and Partners,

As we’ve just ended the first quarter of 2022, and now after two years of working through the COVID-19 environment, I wanted to take a moment to share a few reflections and company updates. As a company, we, like so many others, have navigated a historic and challenging time, while also continuing to progress in many areas and ensuring the continuity of high-quality care to those we serve.

BrightSpring (and our service lines and brands) has a unique platform focused on delivering integrated home- and community-based health services to high-need and medically complex populations. Serving approximately 350,000 such individuals a day is both challenging and rewarding. We take this responsibility seriously, as our company strives to make each customer, client and patient interaction a good one. All of our service lines positively impact people’s lives, and continued progress over the past several years has been a result of executing through our focus on people, quality and outcomes.

While I can’t do it full justice here, I’d like to highlight a few data points from each of these focus areas that speak to our organization’s commitment to our employees and those who rely on our services:

People

It’s no secret that large employers across industries have struggled with staffing during COVID-19. I am humbled by the selflessness and heroism that so many of our frontline workers demonstrated throughout the pandemic to keep clients and patients safe, often serving as a lifeline to them in their homes and communities. With over 50 frontline staff honored with state or national awards in just the last four years, BrightSpring will continue the trend of making substantial investments in our people and culture, for example:

• 30% increase in labor and benefit levels since 2018;
• Steady increases in bonus payments for frontline staff;
• Over $12.3 million paid to employees in COVID-19 vaccine incentives;
• Continued and increasing investments in new apprenticeship and career track programs, in our internal SHARE program, and in the communities where our employees live; and
• Over 80,000 internal recognition (LEGACY) awards issued since 2017.

Quality

As our first responsibility, quality is always at the forefront of what we do. Here are some key facts related to our quality investments:

• More than 900 locations across all of our service lines hold accreditation from leading third-party national accrediting bodies who apply the highest of standards in their surveys;
• In addition to thousands of our clinicians and quality focused personnel across the country, we have more than dedicated 200 clinical, quality, and compliance professionals dedicated to monitoring and leading performance-improving programs across the company;
• We invest over $200 million a year in people, training, auditing, signature programs, accreditations, advocacy, and technologies to support quality, compliance, and safety as part of our “Quality First” framework; and
• Seven studies about COVID-19 outcomes and our quality have been published in peer-reviewed journals since 2020.

Outcomes

Everything we do is measured. Here’s how we are doing across the board:

• Our pharmacy services, which account for over half of the company today, receive “world class” Net Promoter Scores (likelihood to recommend) from our customers, even at levels of 90 and higher (an NPS above 50 is considered “excellent” by benchmarks);
• With 33 million prescriptions filled for complex polypharmacy patients in 2021, we achieved industry-leading 99.6% order completeness and 97.6% on-time delivery in providing customized, proprietary, fast, expert, and local pharmacy solutions to customers and patients across all 50 states;
• 95.2% patient satisfaction and 95.5% therapy completion rates in our infusion pharmacies;
• 99% patient satisfaction and 97% likely to recommend scores for our rehab services, while dramatically improving patients’ functional capability with 74% of them able to gain independence throughout the day (vs. 22.2% before therapy);
• Above-average industry rankings for home health satisfaction (88% vs. 84% national average) for seniors, including a 60-day hospitalization rate that is 7% better than the national average on a relative basis;
• Above-average industry rating for hospice satisfaction (85% vs. 82% national average);
• Compared to receiving traditional medical care, our primary care clinicians achieve a 30-day rehospitalization rate 50% lower than the national average for the most medically complex seniors, with a 30-day rehospitalization rate of 6% in 2022 (one third of the national average), and our primary care services now rolling out to people with disabilities (starting in Ohio) has reduced hospitalization rates by 44% and 30-day rehospitalization rates by 84%;
• We strive to keep every person safe and avoid all incidents, and 99.99% of the 100 million+ hours of services we provide to people with intellectual and developmental disabilities each year are incident free; additionally, despite behaviorally and medically complex health care needs, our clients spend an average of 359 days a year at home instead of in an institutional setting;
• Family satisfaction scores are 4.3 out of 5 for our services for people with disabilities, and we have a 4.1 score out of 5 on patient satisfaction/likelihood to recommend for our personal care services for seniors; and
• 95% participant satisfaction in our workforce services division.

While there are many more compelling outcome measures in addition to these ten, I’ll note one more metric: our COVID-19 results.

BrightSpring’s clients and patients represent populations among those most at risk if infected with COVID-19. When you couple that with the myriad challenges every provider has faced throughout the pandemic, what we achieved is extremely noteworthy. Our COVID-19 case rates for our clients, patients, and employees have remained well below the national case rate throughout the pandemic and today are one quarter of the national case rate.

BrightSpring performed at our best under very difficult and ever-changing circumstances while many other providers struggled or closed. It speaks volumes about who we are, what we do, and our ability to be there for our clients and patients when they need us the most.

We continuously work to enhance processes and protocols while significantly increasing people and systems resources. When seniors and specialty populations have complex needs and challenges and require better care options, we are proud to answer the call.

 

 

 

Jon Rousseau
President and CEO
BrightSpring Health Services