Chemed Corporation (CHE) RBC Capital Markets Global Healthcare Conference 2026 May 20, 2026 8:30 AM EDT
Company Participants
Michael Witzeman – Executive VP, Controller, Principal Accounting Officer & CFO
Joel Wherley – President & CEO of VITAS Healthcare
Conference Call Participants
Benjamin Hendrix – RBC Capital Markets, Research Division
Presentation
Benjamin Hendrix
RBC Capital Markets, Research Division
Pleased to be joined today by Mike Witzeman, Chief Financial Officer of Chemed Corporation; and Joel Wherley, Chief Executive Officer of VITAS Healthcare.
Thank you, guys, both for being here today.
Michael Witzeman
Executive VP, Controller, Principal Accounting Officer & CFO
Thanks, Ben.
Joel Wherley
President & CEO of VITAS Healthcare
Thanks, Ben.
Question-and-Answer Session
Benjamin Hendrix
RBC Capital Markets, Research Division
Just wanted to kind of kick off with some — a little bit of discussion about admission mix rebalancing cadence. For the quarter in 1Q ’26, VITAS had over 19,000 admissions. It was up about 7%. Hospital direct admissions were up almost 14%. All other pre-admissions up about 8.5% in the Florida program.
You described the hospital admission range as appropriate, balanced for sustained long-term stability. With Florida kind of at about 44%, how quickly are you experiencing a push to nonhospital admissions to become the dominant growth driver for the remainder of this year?
Joel Wherley
President & CEO of VITAS Healthcare
Yes. We spoke about in the fourth quarter of the calendar year of ’25, first quarter of the Medicare Cap year, that we really needed to see how that quarter went before we could think about responsible, thoughtful growth back into that Medicare CCN. We established key metrics that we measure on a daily basis specific to the percentage and split out of where our business comes from.
We can’t control average length of stay. What we can control is where
