MD
#Yes, that is also true.
We do provide them when they first come on with a base salary.
It's not a lot of money, but it is some money to tide them over.
So yes, that is ---+ but the big thing is again in order to get our existing 375 radiologists to work extra shifts and longer hours and all that kind of stuff, they're getting paid bonuses and they're getting paid additional per read for ---+ to entice them.
Again, we have to have turnaround times per contract that are ---+ it's something that we obviously live up to.
So all of that is causing the additional expenses.
Yes, that's a question I've been asking myself for 30 years.
Really, there are a couple of things that are relatively significant.
Number one, bringing more transports, and we do have outreach programs.
So if there's a local hospital that doesn't have a NICU, we know that they're still going to get a number of sick babies, and so we try to establish relationships with hospitals to have them call us to transport the babies to our facility when they do get a small or sick or premature baby.
But again, that's not ---+ that doesn't have any ---+ that doesn't have ---+ make any real impact.
The other thing that we do is mothers still go where they ---+ to have their babies where their obstetrician suggests that they go.
And so recruiting obstetricians is another way to bring more babies into your facility.
And we help our hospitals to try and go out, and the obstetricians and the community talk to them about coming to our hospitals, but that's hard to do because the switching costs are very hard ---+ are very high.
And so it's ---+ I mean, really, the number of admissions to the neonatal intensive care unit are a function of the number of births.
I can tell you that if you have X number of births depending upon the population that the hospital takes care of, you're going to have X percentage of those babies admitted to the NICU.
And so other than getting back to the historical ---+ right now, births still are fluctuating around 4 million babies per year, and the high number, back in 2007, 2008 was almost 4.4 million babies.
So other than getting back to those levels of birth, we are not predicting that we are going to see any significant increase to the babies admitted to our NICUs.
Okay.
So basically in Q1, we had positive NICU volume.
So I don't know.
Is that what you're trying to get to, <UNK>.
And in the prior year, you had ---+
So ---+
Yes, Q1 was about 50 bps, and then Q2 was about negative 2 or less.
No, I don't have that right here.
I could get that for you, but yes, I don't have that ---+
Yes, sure.
No, I mean, what I always tell you guys is that there is some lumpiness to how we execute on managed care contracting because it's just the timing of the deal.
So to your point, you're right on the money when you said, obviously, the whole pricing impact is favorable because you have the 50 basis points in P mix, and then some of the managed care pricing came in to play.
And so it's all those factors.
So it worked out well in the quarter.
[Yes, no].
First of all, we do think that there are opportunities for us within our existing specialties.
We're happy with what we're doing.
We've got a plan.
We're going to build the largest group of radiologists, and we're going to build a national group of radiologists, and we've got vRad to use as the backbone for that.
So we're going to get focused on that.
But no, we're not thinking about going into ER or any other large specialty at this point.
No.
No, that's way overstated.
So it is 3% to 4%, but it's not that math.
It's a lot less than that on a quarterly basis.
No.
3% to 4% is the impact on the overall EBITDA that we're expecting.
But most of it is coming from vRad, yes.
But the math that you're working on is not correct.
We can work that ---+ we can work through that with you.
But yes, it's not.
Yes.
Thanks, <UNK>.
Okay.
Well, if there aren't any further questions, then I'll thank everyone for participating today, and I look forward to our next conversation next quarter.
Thank you, operator.
