The home-based care industry is shifting fast, with major leadership changes, new technologies changing the operational game and a significantly different regulatory landscape, including a federal-level fraud crackdown. 

Those are big, sometimes abstract forces. But what matters most is how provider leaders show up in an organization’s day-to-day operations: the referral documents someone has to comb through, the compliance process that needs another look or the growth strategy a new CEO decides to pursue.

These shifts are top of mind for me, and informed the agenda for Home Health Care News’ FUTURE event held Aug. 26-28 in Austin.

As the event grows near, my mind keeps coming back to just why these conversations matter to talk about right now. And for me, the answer is because home-based care leaders and decision-makers have the opportunity to hear from experts and learn what leading organizations are doing right now, in the face of the same obstacles and challenges. One of my favorite pieces of feedback to get from an event is that someone went back to their organization and made a change based on something they learned at one of our events.  

We’ll be getting beyond the headline and into the operational decisions, tradeoffs and results that can help other providers think through their own next steps.

As an aside, my second favorite piece of feedback is that someone made meaningful connections at the event, often just by getting a cup of coffee or sitting down next to someone they didn’t know at lunch.

I’m excited for the networking and truly excited about a great slate of speakers for Austin.

In this week’s exclusive, members-only HHCN+ Update, I highlight three upcoming panels at FUTURE, offering my analysis and key takeaways, including:  

— Why we must ask what technology is doing, not just what it can do

— What the current program integrity landscape could mean

— How new CEOs are shaping their companies’ strategies, service lines and paths forward

Beyond the Pilot: How Providers Are Scaling Technology That Moves the Needle

I love talking about technology’s role in health care, and one of my favorite questions to ask sources is about the pilot process for a new tech platform or tool. It’s one thing to test a new tool; it’s another thing entirely to scale it. What’s most exciting is when a provider crosses the finish line with a cutting-edge platform and can tell me exactly how it’s moved the needle for operational efficiency.

In May, I interviewed Evan Kramer, senior vice president of innovation and operational excellence at Compassus, about the company’s AI-powered intake platform. I was interested in the technology and how it might solve the intake process, a part of the business I often hear described as frustrating and bogged down by manual labor.

For Compassus, this process used to include a person combing through 60 to 80 pages of referral documents to ensure a referral is a fit. This intensive process sometimes leads agencies to accept referrals only to later realize that a patient is not within the provider’s service area, requiring a rejected referral.

With the new AI tool, the technology could comb through all of those documents, ensuring zip code and insurance, etc. are a fit — all within a matter of minutes.

Our readers were clearly interested in this transformation as well, with the story earning some of the most views of any piece that month.

So we invited Chas Morgenstern, the senior vice president of shared services and optimization at Compassus, to come to FUTURE to pull back the curtain on the specific steps they took to move from a pilot to a full-scale rollout.

HHCN also recently covered how AI tools are transforming the day-to-day at Bayada Home Health Care. The company has implemented AI-enabled clinical decision-support tools, and these have directly saved patients from unnecessary hospitalizations, according to Bayada president Justin Searle.

To understand the “how” behind Bayada’s AI toolkit, so we invited Joseph Zazworskey, division director of clinical practice and leadership at Bayada to join this panel and share how Bayada has successfully scaled technology and delivered measurable value.

On Aug. 28, make sure to come hear Chas and Joseph share more about the tech solutions that not only have the potential to change the home-based care operating game — but are already doing so.

We’re switching up our usual panel format for this one and including a presentation from both Chas and Joseph before we settle in for some Q&A. I expect audience questions to be pretty plentiful here. If you have a question you think I should definitely ask our expert speakers and want to have the best chance of getting it answered, email me directly.

Turning Up the Heat: Navigating Home-Based Care’s New Enforcement Landscape

2026 is shaping up to be an extremely fraud-focused year. The second Trump administration’s focus on fraud, waste and abuse is not surprising, but the way federal agencies have narrowed in on home-based care has been. When Oz and RFK are name-dropping home-based care on the regular, you know the focus on these services has made it to the highest levels of the U.S. health care system and the implications are real.

This year, we’ve seen CMS enact a moratorium on new Medicare home health enrollments, recommend states consider Medicaid home-based care enrollment moratoria (which states are increasingly beginning to do) and defer over $1 billion in Medicaid payments. We wanted to bring together leaders on both home-based care and HME sides to share what these actions, and a general crackdown on fraud, waste and abuse, mean for the industries.

To untangle what this crackdown means for your business, we’re bringing together Katie Wehri, the vice president of regulatory affairs, quality and compliance at the National Alliance for Care at Home; Michelle Cone, the senior vice president of industry engagement at HomeWell Care Services; and Gayle Devin the CEO of Home Care Delivered.

It’s easy to stay high-level with topics like these. But I’m excited to dig into the real implications and operational impacts of the current program integrity landscape.

We’ll be discussing how providers can stay compliant to avoid getting inadvertently caught up in the enforcement crackdown, how growth-minded businesses can still execute their goals and what the next phase of federal oversight likely looks like. But I’d love to hear what’s top of mind for you, whether it’s how your organization can help advocacy efforts, learn compliance techniques or something totally different.

The New CEO Playbook: Leading Through Uncertainty and Opportunity

New leadership represents a pivotal moment for a home-based care company—an opportunity to either double down on a legacy or transform a strategy. Given several notable CEO transitions in the last two years, I wanted to bring together three top executives to discuss what their leadership will bring to their companies.

Elara Caring named Ananth Mohan its CEO last year. The executive, who formerly served as Elara Caring’s chief operating officer, has had some time in his new role to settle in. HHCN caught up with Mohan about a month after he stepped into the role, asking about his priorities regarding technology, high-acuity care and value-based care. Mohan also indicated that the provider had more M&A on the horizon.

“The role of COO helped me build deep, strong relationships across the company and with the leaders,” Mohan previously told HHCN. “As I think about our transformation to where we are, I’ve had a hand in shaping most of our initiatives to get to the Elara we are today. I had a front row seat to Scott Powers, who has been a great partner and mentor to me over the last four years as well. I couldn’t have asked for a better environment to step into this role.”

I’m excited for HHCN to catch up with Mohan and follow up on his goals and strategies. I’m also excited to talk about how the investment from Ares’ Private Equity Group (NYSE: ARES) and DaVita (NYSE: DVA), a kidney care provider, will shape the company’s next chapter.

Louisville, Kentucky-based Freedom Senior Services also recently installed a new chief executive: Dr. Brian Holzer. Holzer came from the CEO role at in-home substance use disorder treatment provider Aware Recovery Care. I first met Holzer during his tenure at Aware, as I previously reported for HHCN’s sister publication, Behavioral Health Business.

I caught up with Holzer in June to chat about his strategy for Freedom, and he shared his plans to make the company an “aggressive” M&A player. Holzer highlighted some interesting tailwinds for Freedom, including its dual focus on English as a second language and English as a primary language. I’ll want to ask him about how the company’s model sets itself up to achieve the goals Holzer has set for it. He shared that he wants to grow density in the states Freedom operates in, and expand into new ones, through both organic growth and M&A.

“We think we have an enormous opportunity to grow a first-in-class, multi-state, non-skilled and adult day company,” Holzer previously told HHCN.

Finally, our new CEO panel includes LiveWell Partners’ new CEO, Stacie Bratcher. Bratcher is similarly growth-minded and looking to expand LiveWell’s footprint

“As we look to position the organization for growth, we have attractive markets here in the Midwest,” she previously told HHCN’s sister publication, Hospice News. We really want to look at what are those opportunities to expand through our market density that we already have, but then, also, how we can add from an M&A perspective to those markets to expand those overall services.”

Bratcher also said she would consider growing the company’s service lines and payer partners.

She said that she would consider adding personal care as a service line or partnering with the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs (VA). During the panel, I’ll want to follow up on her thoughts about LiveWell’s growth strategy and potential.

New leadership can define a company’s next chapter, and this panel gives attendees an inside look at the tactical shifts these three leaders are making to prepare for the future.

These are just a few of the panels I’m excited about at FUTURE. We’ve got a great set of speakers, and even the first-ever ‘FUTURE After Dark’ experience at Antone’s Nightclub — a chance to extend conversations beyond the usual networking hours while enjoying some great music. 

As a reminder, HHCN+ members get a discount on tickets to our events. I encourage you to take advantage of that — and I hope to see you in Austin.