Sam Williams, Director of Palliative Care Operations at Compassus, has been named to the Future Leaders Class of 2026 by Home Health Care News.
To become a Future Leader, an individual is nominated by their peers. The candidate must be a high-performing employee who is 40 years of age or younger, a passionate worker who knows how to put vision into action, and an advocate for seniors, and the committed professionals who ensure their well-being.
Williams sat down with Home Health Care News to share what drew her to the home health & home care industry, the biggest leadership lessons she has learned, her thoughts on the future of home health & home care, and much more. To learn more about the Future Leaders Awards program, visit https://futureleaders.wtwhmedia.com/.
HHCN: What drew you to the home health & home care industry?
Williams: My background is in the CCU/ ICU, and what I witnessed there changed the trajectory of my career. I saw over and over again what happens when patients and families reach a crisis point without ever having had a real conversation about what they wanted. I witnessed bad outcomes, unnecessary suffering, and deaths in the unit that nobody would have chosen for themselves.
I went back to school with the hopes of finding a way to intervene earlier in that process. When I found (more like stumbled into) palliative care, I knew that I had found exactly what I was looking for. Community-based palliative care gives patients and families the opportunity to understand all the pieces at play — their diagnosis, their trajectory, their options — and make informed decisions for themselves.
More often than not, when people truly understand what aggressive intervention looks like at end of life, they choose something different. That realization has driven everything I have done since.
HHCN: How would you describe your leadership style, and how has it changed over time?
Williams: I lead by being direct and by being present. I think the people you lead deserve honesty about expectations, challenges, where things stand, and I have always believed that clarity and transparency is a form of respect.
What has evolved over nearly ten years in this field is my patience with the process. Early on, I wanted to solve everything quickly. What palliative care teaches you, both clinically and professionally, is that the most important outcomes often require slowing down, listening carefully, and trusting that the right conversations will build rapport with your team. I try to bring that same philosophy to how I lead.
HHCN: What is the biggest leadership lesson you’ve learned while serving the home health & home care industry?
Williams: That the work only scales if the people doing it feel supported and clear on their purpose.
In palliative care, especially, providers are carrying an enormous amount – emotionally, clinically, and professionally. Without the structures, boundaries, and clarity that allow providers to do this work sustainably, you lose people. And when you lose good palliative care providers, patients lose access to something that genuinely changes their experience of serious illness.
The biggest lesson I have learned is that protecting your team is not separate from serving your patients, instead it is an essential part of it.
HHCN: In one word, how would you describe the home health & home care industry and why?
Williams: Underestimated.
The work that happens in people’s homes (outside of hospital walls, without the infrastructure and visibility of a traditional clinical setting) is some of the most meaningful and complex care being delivered anywhere in healthcare. We meet patients where they are, in every sense of that phrase, and we do it with fewer resources and less recognition than the setting often deserves.
That is beginning to change, and I think the next decade will make clear just how central home-based care is to the future of healthcare.
HHCN: What do you see as the biggest opportunities and challenges currently facing the home health & home care industry?
Williams: One of the greatest opportunities in front of us is the integration of population health management tools into home-based palliative care. Right now too much of this work is reactive — we are responding to crises rather than preventing them. By systematically incorporating safety assessments, medication management protocols, and better screening for caregiver burden into our care model, we can identify risks earlier and intervene before a patient’s situation deteriorates.
Caregiver burden, in particular, is chronically under-addressed; when caregivers reach a breaking point, patients lose the very support system that makes remaining at home possible. Building the infrastructure to get ahead of these issues, rather than managing the fallout, will not only improve outcomes for patients and families but will fundamentally strengthen the case for the value of home-based care.
Closely tied to that is the reimbursement challenge. The teams doing this work are managing some of the most complex patients in the healthcare system, and the data consistently shows that quality palliative care reduces unnecessary hospitalizations and lowers costs at end of life. Payment models have not caught up to reflect that value. Enhanced reimbursement for teams caring for patients with serious illness and demonstrably impacting expenditures is the policy shift that would allow this field to do what it is capable of doing.
HHCN: If you had a crystal ball, what do you think will impact the home health & home care industry over the next 5-10 years?
Williams: I think we will see a significant shift in how the broader healthcare system views home-based palliative care – from a niche service to an essential component of managing serious illness.
As the population ages and the limits of hospital-centered care become more apparent, the value of reaching patients at home, having honest goals-of-care conversations early, and reducing unnecessary utilization will be impossible to ignore. In some ways that shift is already beginning. The inclusion of palliative care as a proposed benefit under the Home Health Medicare payment model for 2027 is a meaningful signal that policymakers are starting to recognize what this field delivers. There is still a great deal to be worked out, and we should be clear that a proposed rule is not a finished policy, but it is a step in the right direction and one worth watching closely.
I also think the field will be shaped by how well we address workforce sustainability. The clinical and emotional demands of this work are real, and attracting and retaining the right providers will require organizations to be intentional about scope, support, and culture in ways they have not always been.
HHCN: In your opinion, what qualities must all Future Leaders possess?
Williams: Conviction and humility in equal measure. You have to be willing to say hard things – to advocate for standards, push back on the path of least resistance, and hold a clear vision even when it is easier not to. But you also have to be genuinely curious about what you do not know and honest about where you need to grow.
In palliative care, I have learned that the most important thing you can offer anyone, a patient, family member, or colleague, is your full attention and your honesty. I think the same is true of leadership. Future Leaders in this field will need to be people who can sit in the discomfort of hard conversations and come out the other side with something useful to offer.