There’s a certain energy that fills a room when passionate homecare leaders show up ready to talk honestly about what’s hard, what’s working, and where the industry is headed. That energy is what made Care Forward 2026 so impactful.
Homecare leaders from across New York, New Jersey, Connecticut, and Pennsylvania gathered for a packed day of keynotes, breakout sessions, live product demos, and the kind of hallway conversations that don’t make it into any slide deck—but often matter the most. Our partners, representing a wide range of homecare solutions, joined the HHAeXchange team in making it a day worth showing up for.
Here’s a complete look at everything that happened.
HHAeXchange CEO Paul Joiner started his keynote by acknowledging the weight of what everyone in the room is managing every day—challenging rates, persistent caregiver turnover, intensifying regulatory oversight—and the increasing complexity that comes with running an agency in 2026. But he framed that pressure not as a reason to retreat, but as the reason HHAeXchange makes the product investments it does.
From there, Joiner walked through what’s been shipped and what’s ahead, such as our redesigned caregiver mobile app, HHAeXchange+, our new Visit Maintenance dashboard, upcoming embedded payroll solution, configurable shift-overlap tolerances, and new clinical functionality.
Joiner then discussed how we are at a historic inflection point when it comes to AI. His advice to the room: stay curious and move early. The providers who experiment now will be the ones ready to leap ahead as the future with AI comes into focus.
He was also candid about what HHAeXchange is building toward. A lot of what’s in the market today are point solutions: useful for addressing immediate needs, but not the long-term answer for a core platform. Our goal is to re-platform HHAeXchange into an AI-native system that fundamentally reshapes how homecare operates end-to-end.
He noted that 82% of the company’s code output last quarter was developed with AI-assisted tools—a signal of how deeply AI is already embedded in how we build our product.
Julian Feeley, VP of Strategy and Corporate Development, then took the stage for a live demonstration of new AI capabilities. Attendees watched AI extract data from a PDF authorization document and enter it into the system automatically, and they saw AI analyzing denied claims, matching caregivers to clients, and building care plans from historical records—doing in minutes what used to take hours.
Damon Terzaghi from the National Alliance for Care at Home, which represents over 10,000 home- and community-based services (HCBS) organizations and 30,000 professionals, gave a clear look at the regulatory landscape shaping the industry right now. Personal care accounts for nearly 63% of all home-based service utilization, and the policy environment surrounding it is not getting simpler.
He walked through the ongoing friction points: EVV coordination between state agencies, health plans, and technology companies; interoperability challenges that hit multi-state providers especially hard; and unresolved questions around penalties and compliance thresholds. The takeaway for providers was straightforward: they need to get ahead of compliance if they want to succeed.
The HHAeXchange team also took some time to recognize the agencies doing the work at the highest level.
The Excellence in Visit Reliability award went to Fox Chase Home Care Inc. with a 99.99% visit reliability rate. Honorable mentions: S & A Unified Home Care, Astera Housing Inc., and Golden Age Home Care.
EVV Compliance Champion was awarded to Elite Home Health Care with a 96.51% compliance rate. Honorable mentions: People Care, Nursing Personnel, and A+ Home Care.
The award for Outstanding Growth went to Fidelity Home Care. Honorable mentions: CarePoint Home Care, Caregiver Pro Homecare, and Harbor Care.
These agencies are an example of what operational excellence looks like in practice—and what’s possible when agencies commit fully to the tools and workflows they have.
Breakout sessions ran throughout the day, giving attendees a chance to go deep on the areas most relevant to their operations. The morning sessions covered EVV best practices and our new clinical documentation product. In the afternoon, attendees participated in a session on HHAeXchange+, the new caregiver mobile app; got a walkthrough of our conflict management tool; and learned more about our upcoming embedded payroll product.
The Innovation Center ran throughout the day with live demos across Visit Maintenance, Clinical Documentation, AI-Powered Shift Booking, Revenue Cycle Management Services, the Integrations Marketplace, and more—with exhibit tables from premier sponsors Zingage and RN Pad and the broader partner ecosystem rounding out the floor.
Joiner moderated an informative conversation with Nikia Glapa, AVP at Molina Health, and Jack Nunez, VP of Operations at Elderserve Health. The consistent message from both: documentation quality and EVV consistency are becoming non-negotiable factors in how payers evaluate provider relationships. Clean visit records and complete clinical documentation matter—not just for reimbursement, but for the conversations that happen when contracts come up for renewal.
Lloyd Hilton brought a portfolio-level perspective from Hg Capital, whose GenAI Laboratory spans 50+ companies with 1,500+ live GenAI projects. Currently every single one of Hg’s portfolio companies is actively deploying generative AI across operations and product.
Hilton made it clear that when it comes to AI, the pace of change isn’t linear—it’s accelerating. What felt like a dramatic leap in the last couple of years will look small compared to what’s coming. For homecare, the agencies that engage seriously with AI now will build a compounding advantage. It’s not about being a trailblazer—it’s about not getting left behind.
Laura Anderson, SVP of Product, closed the content day with an important message: care depends on caregivers. If their experience isn’t working, nothing else will.
The benefits of HHAeXchange+—easier workflows, faster onboarding, better EVV compliance—are real, but she was direct about what agencies need to do: adopt the technology. Agencies that move faster see the benefits sooner. One caregiver summed up the experience simply: “The new app is much easier to use, and I love that it is set up to allow me to do my job without problems.”
Looking ahead, a new Member Compliance module will serve as the single source of truth for patient management. And more AI is coming, embedded practically inside the workflows teams already use.
She ended with a call for feedback. “A lot of what we’ve built has come directly from what you’ve told us.” Keep sharing. Those conversations shape what gets built next.
Can we include one or two lines about Rob’s demo?
Care Forward 2026 covered a lot of ground. But what made it more than a product conference was the room itself. The attendees have spent their careers making sure older adults and people with disabilities can stay in their homes and communities. Getting a few hundred of them in the same place to compare notes, ask hard questions, and learn from each other was truly invaluable.
Homecare is getting more complex, and the stakes are higher—but the technology is also getting better. Attendees shared that they gained a clearer sense of where things are heading and at least a few things they can bring back to their teams to make their businesses more successful.
HHAeXchange connects more than 2.7 million caregivers, 32,000 agencies, 180 managed care organizations, and 28 states on a single platform. Maybe include a CTA to connect with us, link to the demo page?
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