2026 Conference Sessions

New AI tools seem to appear every day. From Microsoft Copilot and Claude to Gemini and Grok, HME leaders are being asked to decide which tools belong in their business, how employees should use them, and how to balance innovation with security and compliance. This session explores practical strategies for evaluating AI platforms, establishing guardrails, and helping staff get meaningful value from AI while minimizing risk. 

This session will focus on the most cutting-edge use and abuses of AI and algorithimic software tools and extrapolations by payors and teach suppliers how to defend and prevent these types of audits. This session will also cover current litigation on key legal issues and developments in the laws surrounding the use of AI and algorithimic tools and sampling and extrapolation. 

Denials remain one of the most persistent threats to cash flow, efficiency and reimbursement performance for HME providers. While strong processes, payer knowledge and disciplined follow-up are still essential, AI is changing how organizations prioritize and recover denied revenue. This session will explore how AI can help providers move from reactive denial management to more proactive revenue recovery, including practical examples of AI-driven denial prioritization. Attendees will learn how smarter work allocation can reduce wasted effort, improve staff efficiency, accelerate collections and increase revenue capture while keeping human expertise and operational guardrails at the center of the process.

Barcode scanning solved many manual data-entry problems, but today's business complexity requires much more. Explore how RFID, automation, AI, and connected workflows are changing inventory operations from reactive to intelligent and predictive.

1. Format: Collaborative Discussion/Presentation (Cardinal Health + payer representative)
2. Goal: Help suppliers understand the contracting models that exist in the HME space with payers today, and the opportunity to move beyond traditional fee for service arrangements towards more sophisticated payer constructs and relationships
3. Core topics:
   1. Landscape of current DME/HME payer contracting models
   2. Capitation and risk-bearing models for DME/HME
   3. What payers look for in a “risk-ready” supplier
   4. Data/infrastructure needed to take on risk
   5. Real-world case studies of successful value-based arrangements
   6. Negotiation strategies for moving up the sophistication curve

HME leaders spent the pandemic years keeping teams afloat - and the years since rebuilding engagement after survival mode. Just as the workforce found its footing, a new disruption arrived: AI. Today's employees aren't just tired; they're wondering whether the technology being rolled out to "help" them is really there to replace them. Engagement strategies built for the post-COVID era won't answer that question.

This presentation examines what leading an engaged HME workforce looks like now - and over the next five years. We'll explore why AI anxiety is the new burnout, how to position automation as a tool that elevates staff rather than threatens them, and how to communicate change so your most skeptical employees become your strongest adoption champions. Attendees will hear practical, field-tested approaches for building trust during constant disruption, redesigning roles as transactional work gets automated, and retaining institutional knowledge while embracing new technology.

You'll leave with a change communication framework and concrete engagement strategies you can put to work with your team immediately - no matter where your organization is on its AI journey.

Learning Objectives:

1. Recognize the shift from post-COVID engagement challenges to AI-driven workforce anxiety.
2. Position automation as a tool that elevates employees and patient care, not replaces them.

3. Build a change communication plan that turns skeptics into champions.

    
    

    
    
    

Every booth at Medtrade promises AI that automates your business. But the operators who've actually done it will tell you the demo was the easy part — the real work was transforming how the business runs: retraining staff around exceptions instead of data entry, rebuilding intake and cash-flow processes, and learning the hard way that automation doesn't always mean done. This candid, vendor-neutral panel brings together a DME provider who has run AI intake in production for 2+ years, a longtime DME operations leader, and an AI builder to tell the real story of transformation — what changed, what broke, what it took, and what they'd do differently. Attendees will hear how providers went from fax piles to same-day setups, how roles and headcount shifted, the operational KPIs that proved it was working (not just faster), how to pressure-test a vendor before you sign, and why keeping control of your referral "front door" matters as payers and platforms move to intermediate it. You'll leave with a one-page vendor-evaluation scorecard and a starter KPI set to benchmark your own transformation.

Most DME providers deliver excellent care — but their digital presence and patient retention tell a different story. Outdated Google Business Profiles, few online reviews, websites that generate no leads, and patients quietly dropping off the back end of resupply programs are costing providers real revenue every day.

This session delivers a practical marketing framework tailored to the DME space. Attendees will walk away with actionable strategies across the full marketing stack: reputation management, search and answer engine optimization (AEO), website lead conversion, and the retention fundamentals that keep resupply programs growing. Many providers focus almost entirely on new patient acquisition — but if patients are leaking out the back faster than they come in the front, acquisition alone will not produce the growth you're looking for. This session will help you stop leaving referrals on the table and start building a brand and a patient base that compounds over time.

A strong marketing strategy and a focused sales plan are essential for sustainable business growth. This interactive three-hour workshop provides business owners, entrepreneurs, and organizational leaders with a practical framework for developing an integrated marketing and sales plan that aligns business goals with customer needs.

Participants will learn how to analyze their market, identify ideal customers, define clear marketing and sales objectives, and create compelling messaging that differentiates their organization from competitors. The workshop also explores effective marketing channels, content planning, budgeting, and performance measurement while connecting these efforts to a structured sales strategy that drives lead generation, customer acquisition, and long-term retention.

Through guided exercises and planning templates, attendees will begin building a customized marketing and sales plan they can immediately apply within your organization.

Today’s DME providers face growing pressure to improve efficiency, accelerate cash flow, reduce administrative workload, and adapt to rapidly evolving technology. However, even the most advanced billing, automation, and AI tools cannot deliver their full value without strong, well-defined policies and procedures.

In this dynamic, expert-led panel discussion, industry leaders will examine the foundational workflows that drive billing and collection performance—from intake and documentation through payment posting and final collections. Panelists will highlight common challenges across the home medical equipment industry and share practical insights for aligning internal processes with today’s most effective technology solutions.

Attendees will learn how consistent workflows support successful technology implementation, reduce manual effort, strengthen accountability, and improve financial performance. The panel will break down each stage of the revenue cycle and provide actionable strategies for using process and technology together to drive greater efficiency, cash recovery, and profitability.

The DME industry today is much more complicated, and more fast flowing, than the industry was 20 years ago. With the aging Baby Boomers, demand for DME is increasing. Counterbalanced against this are the evolution of technology (think AI), expansion of managed care, decrease in reimbursement, and aggressive audits. To succeed in this environment, DME suppliers must think outside the box and adopt a business model that increases efficiency…and the resultant reduction in costs. This program will discuss the multiple tools at the DME supplier’s disposal, including (i) implementing central intake, (ii) adopting the hub and spoke model, (iii) utilization of offshore subcontractors, (iv) use of AI, and (v) entering into legally compliant telehealth arrangements.