REVENUE RECOGNITION

3 Months Ended

Mar. 31, 2023

REVENUE RECOGNITION [Abstract]

REVENUE RECOGNITION

3. REVENUE RECOGNITION

Revenues are recognized in the period in which services are rendered. Net patient revenue consists of revenues for physical therapy and occupational therapy clinics that provide pre-and post-operative care and treatment for orthopedic related disorders, sports-related injuries, preventative care, rehabilitation of injured workers and neurological-related injuries. Net patient revenue (patient revenues less estimated contractual adjustments – as described below) is recognized at the estimated net realizable amounts from third-party payors, patients and others in exchange for services rendered when obligations under the terms of the contract are satisfied. There is an implied contract between us and the patient upon each patient visit. Separate contractual arrangements exist between us and third-party payors (e.g. insurers, managed care programs, government programs, and workers’ compensation programs) which establish the amounts the third parties pay on behalf of the patients for covered services rendered. While these agreements are not considered contracts with the customer, they are used for determining the transaction price for services provided to the patients covered by the third-party payors. The payor contracts do not indicate performance obligations for us but indicate reimbursement rates for patients who are covered by those payors when the services are provided. At that time, we are obligated to provide services for the reimbursement rates stipulated in the payor contracts. The execution of the contract alone does not indicate a performance obligation. For self-paying customers, the performance obligation exists when we provide the services at established rates. The difference between our established rate and the anticipated reimbursement rate is accounted for as an offset to revenue—contractual allowance. The payment for the services rendered is due to the Company based on the respective payor contract. Typically, we receive payment within thirty to forty-five days of service.

Management contract revenue, which is included in other revenue in the consolidated statements of net income, is derived from contractual arrangements whereby the Company manages a clinic owned by a third party. The Company does not have any ownership interest in these clinics. Typically, revenue is determined based on the number of visits conducted at the clinic and recognized at the point in time when services are performed. Costs, typically salaries for our employees, are recorded when incurred. Management contract revenue is typically due the month following the service provided.

Revenue from the industrial injury prevention services segment, which is included in other revenue in the consolidated statements of net income, is derived from onsite services the Company provides to clients’ employees including injury prevention, rehabilitation, ergonomic assessments and performance optimization. Revenue from the industrial injury prevention services segment is recognized when obligations under the terms of the contract are satisfied. Revenue is recognized at an amount equal to the consideration the Company expects to receive in exchange for providing injury prevention services to its clients. The revenue is determined and recognized based on the number of hours and respective rate for services provided in a given period. Payment for services rendered is typically within thirty days.

Additionally, other revenue includes services the Company provides on-site, such as schools, for physical or occupational therapy services, and fees from athletic trainers. Contract terms and rates are agreed to in advance between the Company and the third parties. Services are typically performed over the contract period and revenue is recorded at the point of service. If the services are paid in advance, revenue is recorded as a liability over the period of the agreement and recognized at the point in time, when the services are performed.

The Company determines credit losses based on the specific agings and payor classifications at each clinic. The provision for credit losses is included in clinic operating cost in the statements of net income. Patient accounts receivable, which are stated at the historical carrying amount net of contractual allowances, write-offs and provision for credit losses, includes only those amounts the Company estimates to be collectible.

The following table details the revenue related to the various categories (in thousands):

	Three Months Ended
	March 31, 2023		March 31, 2022
Net patient revenue	$	126,581	$	109,538
Other revenue		799		872
Physical therapy operations	$	127,380	$	110,410
Management contract revenue		1,779		2,226
Industrial injury prevention services revenue		19,350		19,068
	$	148,509	$	131,704

Medicare Reimbursement

The Medicare program reimburses outpatient rehabilitation providers based on the Medicare Physician Fee Schedule (“MPFS”). For services provided in 2017 through 2019, a 0.5% increase was applied to the fee schedule payment rates before applying the mandatory budget neutrality adjustment. For services provided in 2020 through 2025 no adjustment is expected to be applied each year to the fee schedule payment rates, before applying the mandatory budget neutrality adjustment.

In the 2020 MPFS Final Rule, Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (“CMS”) revised coding, documentation guidelines, and increased the code values for office/outpatient evaluation and management (“E/M”) codes and cuts to other codes to maintain budget neutrality of the MPFS beginning in 2021. Under the 2021 MPFS Final Rule, CMS increased the values for the E/M office visit codes and made cuts to other specialty codes to maintain budget neutrality. As a result, CMS projected a 9% decrease in fee schedule payment rates for therapy services set to take effect in 2021. However, Congress intervened with passage of the Consolidated Appropriations Act, 2021 and reimbursement for the codes applicable to physical/occupational therapy services provided by our clinics received an estimated 3.5% decrease in the aggregate in payment from Medicare in calendar year 2021 as compared to 2020.

In the 2022 MPFS Final Rule, there was to be an approximately 3.75% reduction to Medicare payments for physical/occupational therapy services. This was due to the expiration of the additional funding to the conversion factor provided by Congress in 2021 under the Consolidated Appropriations Act, 2021. However, this reduction was addressed in the Protecting Medicare and American Farmers from Sequester Cuts Act (“2021 Act”) signed into law on December 10, 2021. Based on various provisions in the 2021 Act, the Medicare rate reduction for 2022 was approximately 0.75%. The 2021 Act did not address the 15% reduction in Medicare payments for services performed by a physical or occupational therapist assistant, which began on January 1, 2022.

In the 2023 MPFS Proposed Rule published on July 7, 2022, CMS proposed a 4.5% reduction in the Physician Fee Schedule conversion factor.  However, this reduction was addressed in the Consolidated Appropriations Act, 2023 (“2023 Act”) signed into law on December 29, 2022. The provisions of the 2023 Act increase the conversion factor by 2.5% for 2023 and by 1.25% for 2024.  This results in an overall reduction of approximately 2% in the 2023 Physician Fee Schedule conversion factor for 2023.

The Budget Control Act of 2011 increased the federal debt ceiling in connection with deficit reductions over the next ten years and requires automatic reductions in federal spending by approximately $1.2 trillion. Payments to Medicare providers are subject to these automatic spending reductions, subject to a 2% cap. In 2013, a 2% reduction to Medicare payments was implemented. The Bipartisan Budget Act of 2015 extended the 2% reductions to Medicare payments through fiscal year 2025. The Bipartisan Budget Act of 2018 extends the 2% reductions to Medicare payments through fiscal year 2027. The CARES Act suspended the 2% payment reduction to Medicare payments for dates of service from May 1, 2020, through December 31, 2020, and the Consolidated Appropriations Act, 2021 further suspended the 2% payment reduction through March 2021. In April 2021, additional legislation was enacted that waived the 2% payment reduction for the remainder of calendar 2021. The 2021 Act included a three-month extension of the 2% sequester relief applied to all Medicare payments through March 2022, followed by three months of 1% sequester relief through June 30, 2022. Sequester relief ended on June 30, 2022.

Beginning in 2021, payments to individual therapists (Physical/Occupational Therapist in Private Practice) paid under the fee schedule may be subject to adjustment based on performance in the Merit Based Incentive Payment System (“MIPS”), which measures performance based on certain quality metrics, resource use, and meaningful use of electronic health records. Therapists eligible to participate in MIPS include only those therapists who are enrolled with Medicare as private practice providers and does not include therapists in facility-based providers, such as our clinics enrolled as certified rehabilitation agencies. Less than 3% of the Company’s therapist providers currently participate in MIPS. Under the MIPS requirements, a provider’s performance is assessed according to established performance standards each year and then is used to determine an adjustment factor that is applied to the professional’s payment for the corresponding payment year. The provider’s MIPS performance in 2019 determined the payment adjustment in 2021. For those therapist providers who actually participated in MIPS during 2019 and 2020, the resulting average payment adjustment in 2021 and 2022 was an increase of 1%. The 2023 adjustment for those therapist providers who participated in MIPS during 2021 is expected to remain at an average increase of 1%.

Under the Middle-Class Tax Relief and Job Creation Act of 2012 (“MCTRA”), since October 1, 2012, patients who met or exceeded $3,700 in therapy expenditures during a calendar year have been subject to a manual medical review to determine whether applicable payment criteria are satisfied. The $3,700 threshold is applied to Physical Therapy and Speech Language Pathology Services; a separate $3,700 threshold is applied to the Occupational Therapy. The Medicare Access and CHIP Reauthorization Act of 2015 (“MACRA”) directed CMS to modify the manual medical review process such that those reviews will no longer apply to all claims exceeding the $3,700 threshold and instead will be determined on a targeted basis based on a variety of factors that CMS considers appropriate.

The Bipartisan Budget Act of 2018 extends the targeted medical review indefinitely but reduces the threshold to $3,000 through December 31, 2027. For 2028, the threshold amount will be increased by the percentage increase in the Medicare Economic Index (“MEI”) for 2028 and in subsequent years the threshold amount will increase based on the corresponding percentage increase in the MEI for such subsequent year.

CMS adopted a multiple procedure payment reduction (“MPPR”) for therapy services in the final update to the MPFS for calendar year 2011. The MPPR applied to all outpatient therapy services paid under Medicare Part B — occupational therapy, physical therapy and speech-language pathology. Under the policy, the Medicare program pays 100% of the practice expense component of the Relative Value Unit (“RVU”) for the therapy procedure with the highest practice expense RVU, then reduces the payment for the practice expense component for the second and subsequent therapy procedures or units of service furnished during the same day for the same patient, regardless of whether those therapy services are furnished in separate sessions. In 2013, the practice expense component for the second and subsequent therapy service furnished during the same day for the same patient was reduced by 50%.

Medicare claims for outpatient therapy services furnished by therapist assistants on or after January 1, 2020, must include a modifier indicating the service was furnished by a therapist assistant. Outpatient therapy services furnished on or after January 1, 2022, in whole or part by a therapist assistant are paid at an amount equal to 85% of the payment amount otherwise applicable for the service.

Statutes, regulations, and payment rules governing the delivery of therapy services to Medicare beneficiaries are complex and subject to interpretation. The Company believes that it is in compliance, in all material respects, with all applicable laws and regulations and are not aware of any pending or threatened investigations involving allegations of potential wrongdoing that would have a material effect on the Company’s financial statements as of March 31, 2023. Compliance with such laws and regulations can be subject to future government review and interpretation, as well as significant regulatory action including fines, penalties, and exclusion from the Medicare program. For the three months ended March 31, 2023, and March 31, 2022, respectively, net patient revenue from Medicare were approximately $41.9 million and $35.6 million, respectively.

Given the history of frequent revisions to the Medicare program and its reimbursement rates and rules, the Company may not continue to receive reimbursement rates from Medicare that sufficiently compensate it for the Company’s services or, in some instances, cover the Company’s operating costs. Limits on reimbursement rates or the scope of services being reimbursed could have a material adverse effect on the Company’s revenue, financial condition and results of operations. Additionally, any delay or default by the federal or state governments in making Medicare and/or Medicaid reimbursement payments could materially and, adversely, affect the Company’s business, financial condition and results of operations.

Contractual Allowances

Contractual allowances result from the differences between the rates charged for services performed and expected reimbursements by both insurance companies and government sponsored healthcare programs for such services. Medicare regulations and the various third-party payors and managed care contracts are often complex and may include multiple reimbursement mechanisms payable for the services provided in Company clinics. The Company estimates contractual allowances based on its interpretation of the applicable regulations, payor contracts and historical calculations. Each month the Company estimates its contractual allowance for each clinic based on payor contracts and the historical collection experience of the clinic and applies an appropriate contractual allowance reserve percentage to the gross accounts receivable balances for each payor of the clinic. Based on the Company’s historical experience, calculating the contractual allowance reserve percentage at the payor level is sufficient to allow the Company to provide the necessary detail and accuracy with its collectability estimates. However, the services authorized and provided and related reimbursement are subject to interpretation that could result in payments that differ from the Company’s estimates. Payor terms are periodically revised necessitating continual review and assessment of the estimates made by management. The Company’s billing system does not capture the exact change in its contractual allowance reserve estimate from period to period in order to assess the accuracy of its revenues and hence its contractual allowance reserves. Management regularly compares its cash collections to corresponding net revenues measured both in the aggregate and on a clinic-by-clinic basis. In the aggregate, historically the difference between net revenues and corresponding cash collections has generally reflected a difference within approximately 1.0% to 1.5% of net revenue. Additionally, analysis of subsequent periods’ contractual write-offs on a payor basis reflects a difference within approximately 1.0% to 1.5% between the actual aggregate contractual reserve percentage as compared to the estimated contractual allowance reserve percentage associated with the same period end balance. As a result, the Company believes that a change in the contractual allowance reserve estimate would not likely be more than 1.0% to 1.5% on March 31, 2023.

A contract’s transaction price is allocated to each distinct performance obligation and recognized when, or as, the performance obligation is satisfied. To determine the transaction price, the Company includes the effects of any variable consideration, such as the probability of collecting that amount. The Company applies established rates to the services provided, and adjusts for the terms of payor contracts, as applicable. These contracted amounts are different from the Company’s established rates.  The Company has established a “contractual allowance” for this difference. The allowance is based on the terms of payor contracts, historical and current reimbursement information and current experience with the clinic and partners. The Company’s established rates less the contractual allowance is the revenue that is recognized in the period in which the service is rendered. This revenue is deemed the transaction price and stated as “Net Patient Revenue” on the Company’s consolidated statements of income.

The Company’s performance obligations are satisfied at a point in time. After the clinic has provided services and satisfied its obligation to the customer for the reimbursement rates stipulated in the payor contracts (i.e. the transaction price), the Company recognizes the revenue, net of contractual allowances, in the period in which the services are rendered. The Company recognizes the full amount of revenue and reports the contractual allowances as a contra (or offset) revenue account to report a net revenue number based on the expected collections.