I’ve been thinking about the Future of Home Care.
I was in Dallas, TX on Monday and Tuesday this week at the Home Care Association of America National Leadership Conference. What a major milestone. There were 850 Home Care providers and suppliers — the largest attendance every.
I remember pretty clearly going back to 2004 in Kansas City, MO when I was the opening keynote speaker for the very first conference for what was then NPDA – The National Private Duty Association. We had 75 people and no vendors in a small hotel meeting room. My Topic was “One A Clear Day … You Can see Tomorrow: The Forces and Trends Shaping the Future of Home Care in America.”
What a difference two decades make in an industry like ours.
Home Care 2030: Factors Affecting the Future of Home Care
Here we are two decades later, ten times as many people, and we’re still talking about the future.
This year, I was blessed to present a breakout session on The Factors Affecting the Future of Home Care with my friend, colleague, and client John Atkinson, the COO and CTO at AxisCare. Our presentation was based on the results of the 2025 Future of Home Care Study conducted by Leading Home Care… a Tweed Jeffries company, and sponsored by AxisCare. You can download a copy of the Research Report here.
We had a full house – standing room only and dozens of people in the hallway who could not get into the room. It’s pretty clear that Home Care leaders want to know about the factors that will affect our future.
The Hot Topic of discussion was AI – How will Artificial Intelligence transform Home Care?
Of all the factors affecting the future that we discussed, I think the topic of most interest was AI, and how Artificial Intelligence will transform Home Care. We shared the model from Sangeet Paul Choudary on the three levels of AI Application.
- Tasks – How AI helps put tasks into repeatable workflows
- Organization Systems – How AI helps continuously improve systems inside companies to increase performance and reliability.
- Competitive Ecosystems – How AI will help Home Care companies restructure the way they do business to create strategic market advantage.
Our presentation was unique in that I brought to the group the results of our research, and John Atkinson, as CTO of Axiscare, brought the perspective of their 4,000 users and how this technology will be applied in their businesses.
How AI is Coming to Home Care
There is a whole new surge of AI Applications in Home Care. I sat in on several other breakout sessions where the presenters explained how they are using AI to improve tasks, workflows, and systems in Home Care. There is no doubt that AI is already here.
So then we ask, how will AI be rolled out in the coming months and years to transform our industry. We’ll find out more with the 2026 Future of Home Care Study. We just launched the new study and we home you’ll help us by giving us your expertise.
This year’s study has three major sections; Industry Trends, Technology, and Impact on Medicaid Companies. The questions fall into these categories:
- The Twelve Systems of a Highly Effective Home Care Company
- Major Pain Points for Home Care CEOs
- External Forces and Trends shaping our industry
- Greatest Opportunities for Home Care Business Growth
- Payer Sources providing the Greatest Opportunity
- Technology Trends with the greatest impact
- Applications for AI in Home Care with the greatest impact
- Home Care Operating System utilization and satisfaction.
For those companies that generate a majority of their revenue from Medicaid, we have four more big questions:
- Concerns about Electronic Visit Verification – EVV
- The Most Important Issues regarding implementation of EVV
- The Economic Impact on Home Care of the One Big Beautiful Bill
- The impact of OBBB in Medicaid Expansion States.
If you are a leader of a company providing Home Care Services, or the leader of a company serving the Home Care industry, we would love to get our insights on these questions. Last year, we had over 270 participants respond to the survey, and we are expecting an even larger response this year.
