HomeCareCon 2026: What Ignited in Orlando

Four days, seventy-three speakers, and a hall full of Florida operators asking a version of the same question: what does growth look like from here?

HCAF's 37th annual HomeCareCon ran July 21–24, 2026 at the Hilton Orlando Buena Vista Palace under the theme Ignite: Spark What's Next — and our team was on the program. Below is what we presented, what we heard in the hallways, and what is still available to you if you could not be in the room.

Four days, 86 exhibitors, 54 sessions

By the association's own count, HomeCareCon 2026 brought together 86 exhibitors, 54 workshops and educational sessions, and 73 expert speakers across four days of education, collaboration, advocacy and celebration.

We have been part of HCAF's program for more than fifteen years, and the tenor of this one was noticeably different. In past years the dominant hallway question was defensive — how do we survive the next survey? This year it was almost entirely forward-facing: how do we grow when the traditional growth lever is unavailable, how do we hold onto the caregivers we have, and how do we prove quality to a referral source who has ten other options.

The takeaway: the operators who showed up in Orlando were not asking how to get through the year. They were asking how to build through it.

What we presented: Pipeline Ignition

On MainCon Day 2 — Thursday, July 23, from 1:30 to 2:50 p.m. — our founder, Nancy E. Allen, BSN, RNC, CMC, presented "Pipeline Ignition: Client Acquisition Strategies That Work" alongside Arlene Maxim of Axxess.

The session dealt with the least glamorous and highest-yield part of agency growth: everything that happens between the moment someone calls your agency and the moment they become a client. Four points we would repeat to any operator reading this:

• Intake is a clinical process, not a front-desk task. The first call decides whether a family trusts you. Script it, staff it with someone who can answer a clinical question, and stop routing it to whoever is nearest the phone.
• Referral relationships renew or they drift. Discharge planners, physician offices, ALFs and case managers change staff constantly. A partnership you built two years ago is only as current as your last conversation with the person who actually holds the pen today.
• Measure the handoff, not just the lead count. Most agencies can tell you how many inquiries they received last month. Very few can tell you how many were still unconverted at day three, or why.
• Every acquisition conversation is a compliance conversation. What you promise at intake becomes what you are surveyed against later. Sales language that outruns your plan of care is a deficiency waiting to be written.

The takeaway: agencies rarely lose clients at the point of care. They lose them in the ninety minutes after the first phone call.

Why does client acquisition matter more this year?

Because the familiar answer — open another Medicare-certified location — is not currently available to most operators. With CMS limiting new Medicare home health enrollment, the growth that remains is the growth you build out of relationships and process: private-duty and state-licensed lines of business, acquiring an existing agency through a change of ownership, and converting more of the inquiries already reaching you.

That reframing sat underneath a great deal of the conversation in Orlando, whether or not the session titles said so. When you cannot add doors, you improve conversion — and conversion is an operational discipline, not a marketing budget.

The takeaway: capacity you already own is the cheapest growth available to you right now.

What happened on the advocacy side?

More than 60 guests attended the Home Care Political Action Committee (PAC) Power Hour Fundraiser on Tuesday, July 21. The evening featured a trivia tournament and appearances by Representatives Jennifer Kincart Jonsson, Vanessa Oliver and Yvette Benarroch, who greeted attendees and joined the competition.

During their first terms in the Florida Legislature, all three supported HCAF's priority legislation, including House Bill 1353 in 2025 — the law that modernized Florida's home health regulatory framework by strengthening agency operations, reducing administrative burden and improving access to care. They also supported House Bill 1013 during the 2026 session, a House-passed proposal to enhance consumer safety and increase transparency across Florida's care-at-home provider continuum.

The PAC reached its $25,000 fundraising goal through the trivia tournament, contributions during the two-day trade show and an accompanying silent auction.

If you operate in Florida and have never traced a regulation back to the session that produced it, that is a gap worth closing. The standards you will be surveyed against in 2027 are being drafted now.

Who was honored in Orlando?

At the 15th Annual Excellence in Home Care Awards, sponsored by Enzo Health, HCAF recognized:

• Exceptional Paraprofessional Caregiver — Cheryl Addison, Lifespace Communities
• Bobby Lolley Distinguished Professional Caregiver — Jill Van Der Westhuizen, Health First
• Terri Santangelo Outstanding Leader — Dominic Aloma, United Care Home Health Services

HCAF also inducted the late Anne Menard — a respected regulator and health care industry veteran — into the Florida Home Care Hall of Fame posthumously, in recognition of her lasting contribution to Florida's home care community. For those of us who have worked both sides of the regulatory table, that induction landed particularly well: the best regulators make the whole field better, and she did.

How can you catch the sessions you missed?

• Handouts. MainCon presentation handouts are available through the HomeCareCon mobile app through the fall, and year-round on the conference website. Keep checking both — additional handouts are still being added.
• Recordings. Session recordings are expected in September at HomeCareLearn.com. HCAF members receive a 20% discount on recordings and other educational programming there.

The new edition of our founder's book, Survivor! Ten Practical Steps to Survey Survival, also debuted at the show. It is available through the HCAF store, and it remains the most direct way to see a survey the way the person holding the clipboard sees it.

Save the date: HomeCareCon 2027

Mark the calendar for July 27–30, 2027, at the Renaissance Orlando at SeaWorld. Room block details and the reservation link are expected soon.

Our thanks to the HCAF team, to everyone who sat in on Pipeline Ignition, and to the operators who stopped us in the hallway afterward with the harder follow-up questions. Those conversations are the reason we keep coming back.

If Orlando left you with a list — an intake process that leaks, a referral relationship that has gone quiet, a survey window opening next year, an ADR or post-payment review sitting on someone's desk — those are the problems our consulting team works on every day. Talk to the Solutions for Care team and we will tell you plainly what we would do first.