Session topic areas are organized by color below. Find what interests you!

• Optimize Operations
• Innovation
• Workforce Management
• Quality of Care & Compliance
•  Growth Mode 
•  Advocacy 

7:00 AM - 9:00 AM

Registration

7:45 AM - 8:45 AM

Breakfast

8:45 AM - 9:00 AM

Opening & Welcome

9:00 AM - 10:00 AM

Keynote Session

Extraordinary People Serving Extraordinary People: Mastering Your Personal Growth Mindset in Order to Serve Others 
Presented by Joseph Machicote

The audience will learn how to customize strategies to assist themselves and their teams to improve their leadership capabilities and presence in both personal and professional relationships by building unshakable trust and loyalty behaviors into their daily interactions to create lasting impact. This blueprinted behavior also extends to external constituents by helping their organization to galvanize relationships and build loyalty and reputation with customers in order to attract new ones from the community it serves.

Learning Objectives:

1. Learn tools that can be used to self manage burnout and position yourself to leverage self-resilience.
2. Create powerful growth mindset affirmations that help to re-center behaviors, words, and actions in the healthcare environment to build stronger relationships.
3. Develop and enhance self accountability skills and think differently about our commitment to the patients we serve.

10:00 AM - 10:30 AM

Break & Networking

10:30 AM - 11:30 AM

Guided Networking

11:30 AM - 12:30 PM

Lunch & Networking

12:30 PM - 1:30 PM

Breakout Sessions

Topic Areas: Workforce Management, Innovation,  Growth Mode , Optimize Operations

Breakout Session 101 – Human + AI: Building a Scalable, Caregiver-First Hiring Process
Presented by Rachel Gartner

Are you struggling to hire enough high-quality caregivers to support your agency’s growth goals? Join Rachel Gartner, founder and CEO of Carework, to explore how blending human recruiting expertise with AI-powered systems can make your hiring process faster, more effective, and more compassionate.

Since 2018, Rachel and her team have helped home care agencies nationwide make over 30,000 caregiver hires, giving them unique insight into what works, and what doesn’t, in caregiver recruiting. In this session, you’ll learn what the fastest-growing agencies have in common, how to streamline hiring without losing the human touch, and why technology should support, not replace, human connection in your recruitment process.

Learning Objectives:

1. How to streamline your recruitment process with technology while still keeping the human connection at the center.
2. Proven insights from supporting more than 30,000 caregiver hires since 2018, including what actually works and what to avoid.
3. The key traits and practices the fastest-growing home care agencies have in common.

Topic Areas: Quality of Care & Compliance, Optimize Operations

Breakout Session 102 – When Patients Go Home: Preventing Medication Harm, Addressing Pain, and Managing Behavioral Crises That Can Drive Readmissions
Presented by Fariborz Zarfeshan, RPh

Older adults transitioning from hospital or skilled nursing center to home, as well as those living at home with multiple chronic conditions, can face significant risks related to medication complexity, difficult-to-recognize drug interactions, uncontrolled pain, and emerging behavioral health needs.

Personal care and home health agencies are increasingly providing medication management services, yet many struggle to identify polypharmacy risks, cognitive or behavioral red flags, and post-discharge pain control. This session provides immediately implementable and practical assessment strategies clinicians can use to quickly identify these high-risk situations during home visits.

Attendees will learn how pharmacists and the patient’s broader care team can collaborate to improve medication safety, support patients with cognitive decline or behavioral health challenges, and bridge pain management gaps to prevent avoidable readmissions.

Learning Objectives:

1. Identify key medication-related risk factors – including polypharmacy, drug-drug interactions, and high-risk medications during home-based patient assessments.
2. Recognize emerging signs of uncontrolled pain, cognitive decline, and behavioral health instability in recently discharged patients.
3. Implement practical strategies to improve care transitions, including communication techniques and pharmacist collaboration, to bridge medication and pain management needs after hospital or SNF discharge.

Topic: Innovation,  Growth Mode 

Breakout Session 103 - What Will & Will Not Work in 2026 For Generating More Billable Hours & Clients
Presented by Welton Hong

It's common knowledge that many home care agencies are still struggling to understand internet marketing and how to leverage its possibilities. Welton Hong breaks down the fundamentals of online marketing and why certain techniques work better than others, depending on what you want to accomplish. Need to drive more clients? Search optimization and pay-per-click advertising works wonders. To increase referrals, social media is quite effective. For both, you need a website that converts well, a pristine online reputation (driven by review quality and quantity), compatibility with mobile devices and plenty of high-grade content. You also need to be prepared to adjust your plans in tandem with the dynamic nature of online marketing. Home care agencies that stay up to date with the changes (and act on them) have a huge advantage in their local markets.

Learning Objectives:

1. Understand core digital marketing channels for home care agencies.
2. Evaluate and optimize key website & reputation components.
3. Adapt marketing strategies to ongoing industry & platform changes.

1:30 PM - 1:45 PM

Break & Networking

1:45 PM - 2:45 PM

Breakout Sessions

Topic: Innovation,  Growth Mode , Optimize Operations

Breakout Session 201 – Cognitive Capacity: The Hidden Constraint Behind Agency Growth
Presented by Rohit Shetty

Most agencies don’t realize how much their growth is constrained by a finite resource: cognitive capacity. It gets consumed by decade-old processes, paperwork, and systems that force teams to rely on memory and constant workarounds. Over time, agencies hit an organizational ceiling. The cost is not just slower growth. It shows up as inconsistent care delivery, missed opportunities for early intervention, and a clinician experience that pulls attention away from the patient. In this session, Rohit Shetty will define cognitive capacity as an operational metric and show how to spot where it is leaking across day-to-day workflows. You will learn how to reset expectations around AI, what it can reliably automate today, and what still requires disciplined process design. Through real-world examples, Rohit will share a practical approach to prioritize investments, reclaim capacity, improve consistency of care, and scale without scaling overhead.

Learning Objectives:

1. How to codify and democratize enterprise knowledge?
2. Leverage AI to deliver patient outcomes that were previously out of reach.
3. Distinguish between an AI opportunity, an automation opportunity, and an AI-automation opportunity.

Topic: Quality of Care & Compliance, Optimize Operations, Workforce Management

Breakout Session 202 - Evidence-Based Microlearning: How Spaced Repetition Delivers Measurable Quality Improvement in Home Health
Presented by Dr. Monika Virk

Traditional continuing education fails busy home health professionals—multi-hour sessions disrupt field work despite quality and compliance needs. Evidence-based research proves microlearning with spaced repetition solves this: 70% better retention, 25-30% less training time, and 90%+ learner preference.

Attendees will explore:

• The evidence: peer-reviewed research explaining why spaced repetition drives sustainable knowledge retention
• Real-world results: home health agencies achieving 45% OASIS accuracy improvements and Star Rating increases through evidence-based microlearning
• Implementation: designing 5-6 minute modules that fit clinician schedules without disrupting patient care
• Measuring impact: connecting education directly to clinical outcomes and quality metrics Ideal for quality directors, training leaders, and executives seeking measurable ROI from education investment

Learning Objectives:

1. Explain the scientific evidence behind spaced repetition and microlearning, including key findings from meta-analyses and healthcare-specific research demonstrating why this approach delivers superior knowledge retention compared to traditional training methods.
2. Apply practical design principles to develop evidence-based microlearning modules for home health clinicians, including optimal module length (5-6 minutes), spacing intervals, content structure, and mobile-first delivery to fit independent field-based workflows.
3. Implement a framework to measure educational impact on quality outcomes, connecting learning interventions directly to improvements in clinical metrics such as OASIS accuracy, Star Ratings, readmission rates, and compliance measure.

Topics: Quality of Care & Compliance, Workforce Management, Innovation

Breakout Session 203 – Workforce Safety: Building an Industry-Leading Model
Presented by Ali Byro, Donald Rouiller, MS, and Rama Abou-Seif, MHA

Johns Hopkins Care at Home has developed a comprehensive Employee Safety and Security Program with seven interconnected components designed to protect staff in home and community-based settings. This session will walk attendees through the program's creation, implementation, and evolution. Key objectives include highlighting safety initiatives, sharing measurable results and outcome data, and promoting best practices that can be adopted by other organizations. Preventing and responding to workplace violence requires a multidisciplinary, systems-based approach. JHCH's model includes an Employee Safety Committee, incident reporting and review processes, a Threat Assessment and Management Team, safety education and training, emergency preparedness, facility security planning, and innovative technologies. Attendees will gain practical insights and lessons learned to inform their own safety programs.

Learning Objectives:

1. At the completion of this session, participants will be able to apply lessons learned from the Johns Hopkins Care at Home model to identify and implement safety strategies within their own organizations. 
2. At the completion of this session, participants will walk away with a comprehensive structure they can use to build their own employee safety program and describe the importance of having an employee safety program. 

2:45 PM - 3:00 PM

Break & Networking

3:00 PM - 3:45 PM

Legislative Updates

Topic:  Advocacy 

State Legislative Update
Presented by Danna Kauffman, Esq.

Stay ahead in the home care industry with a comprehensive overview of the most recent legislative session in Maryland. This session will cover key legislation, including bills that were passed, those that did not make it through, and legislation anticipated to resurface next year. Understand the implications for home care professionals and prepare for future legislative developments in this critical industry update.

3:45 PM - 4:30 PM

Awards Ceremony & Business Meeting
Member Awards, Vendor Giveaways, & MNCHA Year in Review

4:30 PM - 5:00 PM

Networking & Conference Adjourns