This article is part of the HHCN+ membership
This week, Home Health Care News published two lists of 2026 predictions from top home health executives. These lists included insights from 20 non-medical home care and Medicare reimbursement home health executives on the key challenges, opportunities, and trends for the coming year.
Parsing these executives' predictions, one thing is certainly clear. That means home health care will continue to be an important part of the evolution of the U.S. health care system, if healthcare providers can seize the moment and adopt critical technologies to close communication and collaboration gaps.
More specifically, while technology is a top priority, implementation alone is not enough to completely transform operations and propel healthcare providers into the next era of home care.
And we can't continue to maintain years of silos. Providers will need to rethink their service lines to see if they can become more of a one-stop shop, and collaborate with payers and policymakers who often struggle to communicate.
In this week's HHCN+ Update, we share key insights from 20 home health executives' 2026 predictions, sharing analysis and key takeaways, including:
– Why providers need to go beyond finding the right AI tools and overhaul their entire operating system
– Barriers to business evolution for home care providers
– Addressing these barriers will enable providers to grow in the coming year and beyond.
Technology “how”
Not surprisingly, many executives' predictions and priorities for 2026 came down to technology, especially AI. However, it has become clear that just having the tools is not enough; providers need to leverage them as strategically as possible.
“AI and automation will move from experimentation to everyday tools that include intake, scheduling, documentation, QA, and family communication,” said Jeff Salter, CEO and founder of Caring Senior Service. “Successful agencies will not just ‘implement AI,’ they will redesign their workflows around AI. This will move back-office operations from manual and reactive to assisted and proactive, allowing humans to focus more on relationships and less on repetitive administrative tasks.”
This highlights an important point. It's not just about having the tools. We're changing our processes to incorporate them and make it attractive for employees to actually use them.
One of the technology-related challenges we hear from providers is that it can be difficult to get employees trained and comfortable using new tools. While executives and technology teams may be excited about new tools, clinicians and caregivers are far less likely to be excited about getting a new tool just for the sake of doing something new. Workers want reliable tools that make their jobs easier, and they tend to prefer stability over novelty.
Companies seeking to leverage technology to transform their businesses must carefully consider the implications of such an overhaul. In addition to workflow changes, you must keep the human element in mind and prioritize compliance.
“While these tools promise to significantly reduce administrative burden and error rates, they also pose challenges,” said Namrata Yokom Jan, president of Seniors Helping Seniors. “Government agencies need to redefine job roles, maintain effective human oversight, and respond to evolving expectations around data privacy, documentation standards, and AI transparency.”
For providers, it's not a race to get past pilot to installation, it's a race to actually transform day-to-day operations and make processes simpler and more efficient. Without a complete system overhaul in addition to introducing new tools, providers can become stranded and the key benefits of technology adoption become a talking point rather than a transformation.
collapsing silos
For as long as I've covered health care, the main challenge I've heard about the U.S. health care system is its siled nature. Patients are told different things by different clinicians, chase itemized receipts for services rendered, and endlessly write personal information on separate sheets of paper with clipboards in between.
Opportunities to break down silos, such as gaps between service lines, gaps between home health and health systems, and gaps between providers and payers, were featured regularly throughout management's forecast.
On the home health front, healthcare providers must look to the complete continuum of care to fully facilitate the transition of the healthcare ecosystem to the home.
“The greatest opportunity lies in fully integrating home health care with hospice, palliative care, primary care, and risk-based programs so that patients experience a seamless continuum of support,” said Jonathan Freese, president and CEO of Empath Health. “Health care providers who can provide coordinated, whole-person care in the home will help define the future of health care.”
HHCN writes about the opportunities and challenges of expanding into some of these service areas. For example, expanding into palliative care can differentiate home health providers from other providers and improve outcomes, but providers looking to pursue this opportunity must address gaps in knowledge about what palliative care actually is.
In 2026, providers who move to a full continuum approach to healthcare will most likely give their businesses the best chance of success, but with the caveat that this transition must be made carefully, keeping in mind the distinct challenges of each service line.
Margaret Haynes, president and CEO of Right at Home, said a key opportunity for home health care providers lies in the ability to partner with health systems.
“The growing need for home-based services opens up new avenues for collaboration with health systems, allowing home care to play a central role in conjunction with entitlement programs in providing care where people feel most comfortable: their homes,” Haynes said.
But your partnership with your home care provider can't end there. Executives said collaboration should include working with policymakers and payers. With policy shifts such as lower rates for veterans, it will be more important than ever to tighten margins, work with payers to create value-based deals, and work with policymakers to improve the regulatory environment.
Overall, healthcare providers that prove themselves to be a critical part of the overall continuum of care, or those that create their own continuum, will be in a better position in 2026. Healthcare providers that do so while overhauling their systems with AI technology will overcome industry pressures and become top players in the industry for years to come.
