Are you seeking up-to-date information on how federal funding and policy decisions are likely to affect your service lines? Or are you simply curious about the broader policy landscape shaping the aging services field? Either way, you’ll leave satisfied after attending this speed round of Washington updates. The LeadingAge Policy Team will be on hand to fill you in on the latest developments affecting Medicare and Medicaid, workforce policy, affordable housing, and the federal legal landscape. You’ll also receive advocacy tips to ensure your voice is heard in Washington, DC.

Federal oversight of programs funded by Medicaid, the Older Americans Act, and other programs has intensified in recent years as regulators and policymakers sharpen their focus on program integrity in home and community-based settings. This session will provide an overview of evolving federal compliance expectations and how they shape state expectations. Presenters will offer insights into emerging compliance themes across agencies, the operational implications of policy and enforcement trends, and proactive measures to strengthen your compliance infrastructure. You’ll leave with strategies to enhance internal controls, align training and governance practices, and build a culture of accountability that can withstand evolving federal and state oversight.

Federal policy is increasingly focused on strengthening the domestic workforce to address persistent recruitment and retention challenges across the aging services continuum. This session will provide an overview of key workforce policy developments, including those affecting training and education pathways, worker supports, funding opportunities, and emerging regulatory requirements. Presenters will explain how these changes are likely to affect aging services organizations and where new challenges may arise. Join us for a timely, balanced conversation about how federal policy is shaping—and at times complicating—the future of the aging services workforce. You’ll take away practical tips to help you engage in the national conversation.

Pain is often underrecognized and undertreated in older adults with dementia, many of whom cannot reliably self-report their discomfort. This communication barrier leads caregivers to rely on subjective observations, resulting in inconsistent assessments and missed opportunities for intervention. This session will explore how AI-powered pain assessment tools combine automated facial recognition with structured digital checklists to accurately and consistently identify pain-related behaviors in nonverbal individuals. Presenters will demonstrate how to use these tools to improve clinical decision-making and reduce falls, frailty, and inappropriate drug use. Join this session to discover how technology and human care can work together to ensure a pain-free future for older adults.

Are you struggling to meet the complex medical and social needs of residents in your standalone affordable housing community? The Program of All-Inclusive Care for the Elderly (PACE) may offer a solution. PACE enables older adults to age safely in the community by providing comprehensive medical care, social services, and care coordination. During this session, you’ll hear from On Lok, which founded the PACE model, and from On Lok PACEpartners, which guides housing providers interested in launching and scaling their own PACE programs. Presenters will explain the PACE approach and its benefits for housing residents. They’ll also outline strategies for co-locating PACE with housing and share a framework to help you begin your PACE exploration.

Intergenerational programs and community partnerships can enhance the well-being of older adults across care settings. This session will introduce purpose-driven engagement options that improve residents’ quality of life and enable them to share their wisdom with younger generations. Presenters will describe a summer camp for teens and older adults that offers opportunities for connection and storytelling; a LEGO-based engagement initiative; and a classroom experience that enables college students to conduct research informed by older adults. You’ll learn how to develop and scale these purpose-driven practices by identifying the right community partners, tailoring engagement strategies to residents with diverse cognitive and physical abilities, and integrating engagement into daily life.

Traditional wellness and therapy spaces often fall short of meeting the needs of older adults, especially those with mobility limitations or cognitive decline. Fortunately, that’s changing. This session will explore how SeniorScapes, Inc., is creating environments that help older adults move, socialize, and thrive outdoors with dignity and safety. Presenters will showcase the nonprofit’s flagship project at Asbury Communities in Frederick, MD, and explain how it supports fitness, mobility, and brain health. You’ll learn which design and program elements to include in age-friendly public spaces and explore the broader role of parks as social infrastructure that promotes connection and equity for older adults.

Ask home health providers what keeps them up at night, and many will cite the risk of a negative score under the expanded Home Health Value-Based Purchasing (HHVBP) Model, which adjusts Medicare payments based on quality performance. This session may ease their concerns. A home health provider and consultant will share how they turned a negative HHVBP score and financial penalty into a positive payment adjustment. They’ll show you how to interpret HHVBP scorecards, review data sources, and design and implement an improvement strategy. They’ll also offer tips for aligning key operational areas to improve HHVBP measurement outcomes.

As assisted living continues to grow, person-centered approaches to measuring its quality remain scarce. This session will explore how Minnesota addressed this gap by developing an electronic report card that rates assisted living communities on a 5-star scale, using state inspection data and surveys of residents and family members. Presenters will share key findings from the report card’s 2024 statewide implementation, which captured consumer feedback on autonomy, staff relationships, environment, food, and engagement across the state’s assisted living communities. You’ll review tools for measuring resident quality of life and family satisfaction in assisted living, and learn strategies for integrating person-reported measures into quality improvement.

In today’s labor-constrained environment, senior living organizations need more than hindsight. They need actionable foresight. This session will showcase a tool that LCS built that can help. You’ll hear about Retention Radar, a predictive workforce intelligence solution that identifies departments with employees most at risk of leaving their jobs and recommends targeted, practical interventions to support engagement and stability. By analyzing indicators such as benefits participation, scheduling alignment, supervisor stability, and PTO utilization, this innovative tool helps community leaders focus their efforts where they can have the greatest impact. Presenters will explain how Retention Radar equips Executive Directors, Administrations, Human Resources teams, and other operations leaders to interpret workforce trends and make data-informed decisions. Users of the tool will share strategies for translating predictive analytics into targeted retention interventions and explain how Retention Radar is helping to reduce turnover while enhancing the resident experience.

Sixty percent of home and community-based service (HCBS) providers have faced negative margins or program closures over the past three years because of stagnant reimbursement rates and rising costs. This session will offer several solutions to help your HCBS program survive the squeeze. Presenters will share how their agency navigated severe reimbursement challenges, made tough program decisions, and used innovative practices to restore its financial health. Discover how they implemented geographic clustering of clients to improve staffing efficiency and leveraged a remote global administrative workforce to reduce overhead. You’ll gain strategies to right-size your agency, maximize your bottom line, and better support clients and communities amid funding challenges.

Financial performance isn’t the only measure of organizational health. This session will introduce common attributes that go beyond balance sheets and revenue streams to drive sustainable performance improvement in senior living organizations. Presenters will share a performance-improvement framework developed by Baker Tilly, an advisory, tax, and assurance firm. They’ll help you assess how effectively your organization builds governance structures, maintains leadership stability, fosters a supportive workplace culture, pursues proactive capital planning, ensures financial and operational alignment, and engages residents. Representatives from single-site and multisite organizations will share strategies to achieve operational excellence, long-term sustainability, and resilience.

As partnerships among housing, healthcare, and community-based service providers deepen, service coordinators have become the cornerstone of affordable housing for older adults. This session will trace the evolution of service coordination and its role in helping older adults age well in the community. Presenters will provide an overview of the profession’s roots, its proven value, trends reshaping the field, and opportunities to elevate its role. Join this session to explore how emerging models, technology, and data tools are expanding the service coordinator role and how evolving funding approaches can sustain and strengthen this work. A LeadingAge member provider will describe an innovative service coordination program and share lessons for replication.

Identifying your organization’s fraud and abuse risks and building effective programs to mitigate them can be challenging. Fortunately, the Office of Inspector General (OIG) of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services can help. This session will review a set of voluntary, nonbinding resources the OIG compiled to help providers strengthen their compliance programs, understand their fraud and abuse risks, and prepare for new compliance expectations. Presenters will review OIG’s general compliance guidance, examine its sector-specific guidance for skilled nursing and managed care, and discuss hospice guidance currently being updated. You’ll gain practical insights to help your organization enhance the quality of care, strengthen internal controls, and foster a culture of organizational integrity.

Most home and community-based service (HCBS) agencies cite regulation, staffing, and the growth of managed care as their primary obstacles to growth. While these issues are real, this session will show that most obstacles to HCBS growth, quality, and financial success are internal rather than external. Representatives of a life plan community’s HCBS subsidiary will share highlights from their decade of experience helping senior living communities develop and operate home care, home health, and hospice services. You’ll gain insights into the pitfalls senior living organizations encounter when starting and operating HCBS agencies and take home practical, proactive, and remedial strategies to optimize your operations.

Direct care professionals face persistent challenges, including high turnover, low wages, and limited opportunities for career advancement. This session will showcase a promising solution: the Universal Direct Care Workforce Initiative. This career advancement model features immersive training for new hires, specialty training in dementia and behavioral health, and a “Care Integration Senior Aide” who documents and reports clients’ clinical conditions to the care team. A representative from PHI, a national workforce organization, will share data from the initiative’s first year, and a home care partner will describe evidence-based practices implemented through the program. You’ll learn how this model improves the quality of care and boosts workforce satisfaction and retention.