Ronda Buhrmester

Artificial intelligence, automation, payer changes, and regulatory updates dominate today's conversations—but technology alone cannot fix broken processes. Sustainable success begins with a strong operational foundation allowing you to leverage AI effectively.

This interactive session challenges attendees to step back from the industry's hottest topics and evaluate the operational fundamentals that drive long-term success. Using the engaging concept of a "House Inspection," participants will evaluate every major operational area of their organization—from intake and compliance to documentation, customer experience, inventory, revenue cycle, denials, financial health, and leadership.

Participants will diagnose a fictional healthcare supplier facing denials, staffing shortages, cash flow challenges, accreditation findings, and operational inefficiencies. Together, they will identify root causes, prioritize corrective actions, and build a practical 90-day improvement plan.

Attendees will leave with ideas—they will complete a personalized "House Repair Plan" outlining immediate actions, medium-term operational improvements, and long-term strategic initiatives they can implement within their own organizations. Whether preparing for growth, recovering from operational challenges, or strengthening the fundamentals, this session provides practical strategies to build a stronger, more resilient organization—ready to maximize the benefits of AI and automation.

For HME providers, intake is no longer just an administrative function. It is a critical point of revenue cycle control that shapes how quickly and accurately an organization gets paid. Weak intake processes create downstream friction, while disciplined front-end workflows can reduce denials, prevent rework and improve cash flow before a claim is ever submitted.

This session will examine how leading providers are rethinking intake as a strategic revenue cycle capability. Speakers will explore how AI can help teams surface issues earlier, make more consistent decisions and improve authorization readiness without removing human judgment. Attendees will gain a practical view of how stronger intake processes can support scalability, accountability and better financial performance across the organization.

Legislative, regulatory and market changes are reshaping payer mix across the HME industry, creating new reimbursement challenges and financial pressure for providers. As coverage patterns shift, many organizations are seeing greater involvement from third-party administrators, more movement between commercial, ACA, Medicaid and self-pay categories and added uncertainty tied to recent federal budget changes. This session will explore how payer mix disruption is affecting HME revenue cycle performance and provide practical strategies for identifying financial risk, adapting operations and protecting cash flow in a more fragmented reimbursement environment. Attendees will leave with a framework for proactively responding to payer mix changes before they negatively impact business performance.