Purpose-Built AI: from Theory to Practice

Artificial Intelligence

by Isaac Greszes, Eleos

Purpose-Built AI

From Theory to Practice

This 4-part series has outlined how to evaluate, test, and use AI solutions, emphasizing outcome relevance, workflow fit in regulated environments, architectural scalability, and governance discipline. That framework was intentionally rigorous. In a market crowded with pilots and proofs of concept, it reflects the reality that AI outcomes are not accidental; they are the result of deliberate design choices.

This final chapter shares a real-life story of AI implementation using the Polaris AI Engine.

A Reference Implementation

One example of how these principles are applied in practice is Eleos’ Polaris AI engine.
Polaris was developed over more than five years to support regulated conversational care. Rather than relying solely on general-purpose language models, it combines commercial-grade multimodal infrastructure with proprietary clinical intelligence layers that encode documentation logic, reasoning patterns, and safety heuristics.

Purpose-Built AI Eleos Polaris

Key elements of this approach include:

  • Layered architecture, separating foundational AI capabilities from clinical logic and governance controls.
  • Expert-led refinement, with licensed clinicians continuously validating and updating clinical rules.
  • Application-layer tuning, allowing the system to improve without retraining on customer data.
  • Governance-by-design, with explicit boundaries around data use, monitoring, and risk management.

Clinical Control

Importantly, Polaris is not positioned as a fully autonomous system. Clinicians remain in control, using AI as a collaborative tool that reduces administrative burden while preserving clinical judgment.

This design reflects a broader principle: in regulated care environments, trust and adoption depend as much on restraint and transparency as on technical capability.

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Applicability in Care at Home

Care at home workflows differ across home health, hospice, and other palliative care settings. Documentation standards, visit structures, and regulatory requirements vary. Validation within each context remains essential.

At the same time, platforms built to handle high-variability conversational care share structural advantages when entering care at home environments; they:

  • Are designed to operate in unstructured, field-based settings.
  • Encode clinical reasoning rather than relying on generic text generation.
  • Incorporate governance and safety controls suited to regulated care.

For executives navigating pilot fatigue, this distinction matters. Platforms designed as infrastructure — rather than experiments — are better positioned to adapt responsibly as care at home AI adoption matures.

Final Thoughts

AI is here and it’s here to stay. Care at home agencies need to look to AI solutions in order to stay competitive. Knowing which solutions to review, what to look for, and how to move beyond the pilot phase begin with finding Purpose-Built Ai. Many thanks to our friends at Eleos for their expertise on this topic. Read the 4-part series.

# # #

About Eleos

At Eleos, we believe the path to better healthcare is paved with provider-focused technology. Our purpose-built AI platform streamlines documentation, simplifies compliance and surfaces deep care insights to drive better client outcomes. Created using real-world care sessions and fine-tuned by our in-house clinical experts, our AI tools are scientifically proven to reduce documentation time by more than 70% and boost client engagement by 2x. With Eleos, providers are free to focus less on administrative tasks and more on what got them into this field in the first place: caring for their clients.

©2026 by The Rowan Report, Peoria, AZ. All rights reserved. This article originally appeared in The Rowan Report. One copy may be printed for personal use: further reproduction by permission only. editor@therowanreport.com

Purpose-Built AI: Evaluation to Execution

Artificial Intelligence

by Isaac Greszes, Eleos

Purpose-Built AI

From Evaluation to Execution

In part one of this 4-part series, we discussed how care at home agencies can realize the full impact of AI software that goes beyond the testing period. The best way to do this is to find purpose-built tech and evaluate AI solutions for real-world outcomes.

In Part two of this series, we outlined how care at home leaders should evaluate AI solutions — emphasizing outcome relevance, workflow fit in regulated environments, architectural scalability, and governance discipline. That framework was intentionally rigorous. In a market crowded with pilots and proofs of concept, it reflects the reality that AI outcomes are not accidental; they are the result of deliberate design choices.

This article examines what execution-ready, purpose-built clinical AI actually looks like in practice — and why certain platforms are structurally better positioned to deliver sustained value in care at home settings.

Market Tenure is a Weak Signal

As AI adoption accelerates across healthcare, many organizations default to a familiar proxy for confidence: market tenure. Vendors with early pilots, a growing logo list, or proximity to large EHR ecosystems are often assumed to be safer bets.

In emerging AI categories, however, tenure can be misleading. Early adoption frequently reflects experimentation rather than readiness. Platforms may perform well in narrow pilots while masking deeper limitations in clinical depth, scalability, or governance that only surface during broader rollout.

Design is a Better Measure

For care at home leaders under pressure to move beyond pilots, the more reliable question is not how long a vendor has been in the market, but how the system was designed to operate under real-world clinical and regulatory constraints.

Purpose-Built AI

What it Means Under the Hood

Generic AI tools often struggle in care at home environments. Here, it is worth examining what distinguishes purpose-built clinical AI at a structural level.

Purpose Built AI Evaluation to Execution

Clinical-grade platforms share several characteristics:

  • Clinical reasoning embedded in the system, not inferred from prompts. The AI reflects how clinicians assess, prioritize, and document care — rather than simply summarizing conversations.
  • Structured outputs aligned to documentation and reimbursement requirements, ensuring that generated content is usable without extensive manual correction.
  • Safety-aware interpretation of sensitive language, particularly in areas related to risk, decline, or end-of-life care.
  • Governance mechanisms baked into the architecture, including transparency, monitoring, and clearly defined limits on data use.

Conversational Care

Why are conversational care settings more challenging? Clinical insight derived from spoken interactions rather than structured inputs present some of the most complex challenges for AI systems.

Conversational care requires the AI to:

  • Interpret unstructured dialogue occurring in non-clinical environments
  • Distinguish clinically meaningful information from casual conversation
  • Recognize implicit risk signals and contextual nuance
  • Translate narrative interaction into structured, compliant documentation

Added Challenge

Behavioral health and substance use disorder care represent some of the most demanding examples of this complexity. Systems that perform reliably in these environments must handle variability, sensitivity, and regulatory scrutiny simultaneously.

This matters for care at home leaders because many of the same challenges — environmental variability, role-based documentation requirements, and safety-sensitive language — are present across home health and hospice workflows.

Next Steps

As organizations move from evaluation to execution, several questions can help distinguish platforms capable of delivering sustained value:

  • Can the vendor clearly explain how clinical reasoning is encoded in the system?
  • Are outputs structured to align with documentation, compliance, and reimbursement needs?
  • How is safety monitored and governed over time?
  • What mechanisms exist to adapt workflows without destabilizing operations?
  • Where does ROI typically emerge once AI is embedded into daily practice?
  • Answering these questions does not guarantee outcomes – but it significantly reduces the risk of prolonged pilots with limited impact.

Final Thoughts

The next phase of AI adoption in care at home will favor platforms built for durability, governance, and clinical trust. For leaders, the challenge is no longer whether AI can help, but how to select systems designed to deliver value beyond the initial pilot phase.

Understanding how AI was built — not just what it promises — is now a prerequisite for confident execution. Come back next week for the fourth and final installment in this serious where we will discuss a real-world implementation example.

# # #

About Eleos

At Eleos, we believe the path to better healthcare is paved with provider-focused technology. Our purpose-built AI platform streamlines documentation, simplifies compliance and surfaces deep care insights to drive better client outcomes. Created using real-world care sessions and fine-tuned by our in-house clinical experts, our AI tools are scientifically proven to reduce documentation time by more than 70% and boost client engagement by 2x. With Eleos, providers are free to focus less on administrative tasks and more on what got them into this field in the first place: caring for their clients.

©2026 by The Rowan Report, Peoria, AZ. All rights reserved. This article originally appeared in The Rowan Report. One copy may be printed for personal use: further reproduction by permission only. editor@therowanreport.com

Home Care 100 Sneak Preview

Advocacy

by Kristin Rowan, Editor

Home Care 100 Sneak Preview

An Interview with Jeanette Lynn

In a few days, care at home leaders, influencers, educators, and solutions providers are set to descend on Scottsdale, AZ for the 2026 winter edition of the Home Care 100 Leadership Conference. I had the opportunity to speak with Managing Director Jeanette Lynn about this year’s theme, some of the events, and her outlook for 2026.

Home Care 100 Theme

The Rowan Report:

Jeanette, thank you for taking some time to chat today. I know how busy the week before an event is. Can you tell our readers about some of the agenda highlights for Home Care 100?

Jeanette Lynn:

The theme is the data imperative. The future will rely on becoming a data-centric organization. 

“We impact patients, partners, referral sources, payers, policy makers, and all stakeholders. We have to come to the table with the right data in the right way.”

Jeanette Lynn

Managing Director, Home Care 100

I’m very excited about the keynote address from a former employee of Pixar talking about storytelling. When we’re talking with policymakers, providers, payers, we have to tell a story and find the connection with the audience. There is also an opportunity to do a follow-up workshop with him.

Other Key Topics and Sessions

Other sessions to anticipate next week:

  • Panels of providers sharing case studies
  • Six round-table facilitated discussions that are specific to home care, home health, or hospice. Those topics are listed on the event website
  • A showcase on new approaches to being a CEO of a data-driven organization including tangible and practical takeaways on how to do it. Where is the data? Where can I find it and how do I use it?

State of the Industry

RR:

What is your industry outlook?

Jeanette

There is so much that is changing so fast. Look at the conversations around AI technology just in the last year or so. The technology is opening doors that didn’t previously exist. I’m reminded of what I recently heard from Judy Faulkner from EPIC. This is a company that has been ridiculed for some time for having closed systems, following regulations but sharing information as limited as possible; it has taken them awhile to be more patient and physician-friendly. A recent announcement said patients could now access all medical information in one MyChart system across the country.

This will shift interoperability – from patients to nurses to agencies. The demand to fix this is getting higher; we’ve been sitting on the excuse of not being able to influence reimbursement rates; but MA coming out and saying the rates are going to get lower requires that we increase efficiency and the data will help get you there.

One Answer is Interoperability

When you order food online, that company can tell you that Kathy picked up your food at 7:03 p.m., is riding a bicycle, has two stops before she gets to you, and show you the route she’s taking. We can certainly provide more information, more data, and better data for our patients.

We have to supplement existing Medicare product with other services, other approaches, that get the financial lever pulled a different way. The product is too defined, coded, and reimbursed; we need a bundled care product. It’s time everyone else sees that we have more data, information, and influence.

Home Care 100 Jeanette Lynn Interoperability

There are multiple opportunities and pathways. Our goal is to guide our members toward the ones that will work for each organization.

The Year Ahead

RR:

You’ve been at the helm long enough now that you’ve had a chance to get your feet wet. What have been your observations and what does that mean for Home Care 100 and Lincoln Healthcare Leadership for 2026?

Jeanette:

My biggest observations at Home Care 100 and Lincoln Healthcare Leadership: HC100 is a group of diverse leaders who can drive and influence change; there will be continued consolidation and the big players influence everyone else.

For me, the biggest win is after the conference hearing that one of our members initiated a new program, new deal, new partnership. We want that on steroids. We want to exponentially expand those wins.

The Intelligence group pairs advisors with intelligence group members to figure out how to put into action what you learned at the conference. We align experts to supercharge members. So we’ve relaunched the Intelligence Group as an offering year-round.

The subsets of members in the intelligence group are doing smaller in-person meetings covering particular topics. We’re looking for more organizations joining the group and expanding those events, not hosting more HC 100 events.

Final Thoughts

Speaking with Jeanette, it was so easy to see her passion and excitement for the industry, for the upcoming event, and for the members who benefit from the event. I am looking forward to the sessions she mentioned, seeing old friends and making new ones, and, of course, a little dancing and revelry after the hard work is done. 

# # #

Kristin Rowan Editor The Rowan Report
Kristin Rowan Editor The Rowan Report

Kristin Rowan is the owner and Editor-in-chief of The Rowan Report, the industry’s most trusted source for care at home news. She is also a sought-after speaker on Artificial Intelligence, Technology Adoption and Lone Worker Safety. She is available to speak at state and national conferences as well as software user-group meetings.

Kristin also runs Girard Marketing Group, a multi-faceted boutique marketing firm specializing in content creation, social media management, and event marketing. She works with care at home software providers to create dynamic content that increases conversions for direct e-mail, social media, and websites.  Connect with Kristin directly at kristin@girardmarketinggroup.com or www.girardmarketinggroup.com

©2026 by The Rowan Report, Peoria, AZ. All rights reserved. This article originally appeared in The Rowan Report. One copy may be printed for personal use: further reproduction by permission only. editor@therowanreport.com

 

Purpose-Built AI: Architecture, Scalability, Security

Artificial Intelligence

by Isaac Greszes, Eleos

Purpose-Built AI for Care at Home

Architecture, Scalability, and Security

In part one of this 4-part series, we discussed how care at home agencies can realize the full impact of AI software that goes beyond the testing period. The best way to do this is to find purpose-built tech and evaluate AI solutions for real-world outcomes.

Part two focuses on AI architecture, scalability and security.

Architecture and Scalability Across the Tech Ecosystem

AI does not operate in isolation. It sits within a broader ecosystem of EHRs, compliance programs, quality initiatives, and IT infrastructure.
For care-at-home organizations, long-term outcomes depend on whether an AI platform can:

  • Adapt to evolving documentation and regulatory requirements
  • Scale reliably during census fluctuations
  • Integrate cleanly with existing systems
  • Improve over time without creating operational drag

Health informatics research increasingly highlights risks such as model drift — where AI performance degrades as populations, workflows, or clinical practices change — reinforcing the need for continuous monitoring rather than one-time deployment.

purpose-built AI architecture and scalability

Vendors with limited clinical depth or brittle configurations may show early promise in pilots, but often struggle to sustain efficiency and ROI at scale.

Security, Governance

and the Link to Long-Term Value

HIPAA compliance remains foundational, but AI introduces additional governance considerations related to transparency, accountability, fairness, and ongoing risk management.

Healthcare organizations increasingly evaluate AI vendors based on:

  • Independent security and privacy assessments
  • Clear contractual boundaries around data use
  • Explicit retention and deletion policies
  • Documented processes for monitoring AI behavior over time

Expectations

Recent federal regulation, including the ONC’s HTI-1 Final Rule, formalizes new transparency and risk-management expectations for AI-enabled clinical systems — extending well beyond traditional privacy frameworks.

Emerging standards such as ISO 42001, focused on AI management systems, reflect a broader shift toward formal governance of AI in high-risk domains like healthcare. While adoption is still evolving, these frameworks provide executives with a useful lens for assessing vendor maturity.

Strong governance is not only a risk-mitigation strategy — it is a prerequisite for sustaining outcomes, protecting organizational reputation, and maintaining provider trust.

A Practical Takeaway

AI has demonstrated the potential to reduce administrative burden, improve documentation quality, and deliver measurable ROI in healthcare — including regulated, care at home settings.

However, results are not guaranteed. They depend on evidence-backed design, workflow alignment, scalability, and governance discipline.

For care-at-home leaders, the most reliable path to value is not adopting AI quickly, but evaluating it rigorously — with a focus on how the technology is built, validated, and governed.

For organizations navigating pilot fatigue, the critical shift is not testing more tools, but selecting platforms designed for scale, governance, and long-term operational impact.

# # #

This is part 2 of a 4-part series. Read part 1 and come back next week for part 3, “From Evaluation to Execution.”

About Eleos

At Eleos, we believe the path to better healthcare is paved with provider-focused technology. Our purpose-built AI platform streamlines documentation, simplifies compliance and surfaces deep care insights to drive better client outcomes. Created using real-world care sessions and fine-tuned by our in-house clinical experts, our AI tools are scientifically proven to reduce documentation time by more than 70% and boost client engagement by 2x. With Eleos, providers are free to focus less on administrative tasks and more on what got them into this field in the first place: caring for their clients.

©2026 by The Rowan Report, Peoria, AZ. All rights reserved. This article originally appeared in The Rowan Report. One copy may be printed for personal use: further reproduction by permission only. editor@therowanreport.com

Purpose-Built AI for Care at Home

Artificial Intelligence

by Isaac Greszes, Eleos

Purpose-Built AI for Care at Home

How Care at Home leaders can move beyond AI pilots

Care at Home is increasingly turning to AI to address documentation burden, clinician burnout, and regulatory pressure. While AI has the potential to address these issues and more, practical results remain uneven, leaving agencies with a lot of experimentation, but little clarity on actual value.

Evaluating AI solutions should focus on real-world outcomes, how the solution fits into your existing workflow, whether the software is scalable, and how it handles changing regulations. You should also look for AI solutions that are built for care at home (purpose-built). This series of articles will help you make informed, risk-aware decisions about AI adoption.

AI is Coming Fast

Home health and hospice leaders are navigating a difficult balance: persistent workforce shortages, rising provider burnout, expanding documentation requirements, and increasing regulatory scrutiny — all within thin operating margins.

At the same time, AI has moved quickly from experimental to strategic. Many organizations are now evaluating AI not just for productivity, but for operational and administrative efficiency, clinician experience, compliance readiness, and financial performance.

And the stakes are high

Early results across the market have been inconsistent. Some organizations report meaningful reductions in administrative burden and a clear return on investment. However, others struggle to find value after adoption. The difference often lies not in whether AI was adopted, but how it was designed, supported, and governed.

The pilot problem

As AI adoption accelerates, many organizations find themselves caught in extended pilot cycles — testing multiple tools without committing to the operational changes required for scale. While pilots can validate technical feasibility, they rarely provide the consistency or measurement discipline needed to demonstrate sustained ROI in regulated care at home environments.

Quality over Quantity

Why the right evidence matters

In today’s AI market, product demonstrations are easy to produce. Documented outcomes are not.

Executive leaders should expect vendors to demonstrate real-world impact, supported by customer data, third-party validation, or peer-reviewed research. Credible AI partners should be able to explain how their results translate to care at home — and where limitations exist. The challenge is not the lack of information from pilots, but the lack of evidence those pilots results can be reproduced, measured, and sustained, in a care at home setting.

Purpose-built AI Eleos

Objective Evidence that Matters

When evaluating AI platforms, leaders should look for evidence related to:

  • Documentation efficiency, such as reduced time per visit or faster note completion
  • Operational ROI, including quicker billing readiness or reduced rework
  • Compliance support, such as documentation completeness or audit preparedness
  • Provider experience, including reduced perceived administrative burden
  • Care outcomes, including patient engagement and satisfaction

AI solutions can impact efficiency and burnout. But, these outcomes are highly dependent on whether the solution was built for care at home, the quality of implementation, how easily it will integrate into your workflow, and governance. If a vendor cannot explain how results were achieved and whether they are reliable and repeatable outside the pilot, the vendor and the solution should be evaluated carefully.

General Purpose AI

And inconsistent results

Many AI tools marketed to healthcare organizations rely on general-purpose language models designed for tasks like summarization, chat, or content generation — not for producing structured clinical notes aligned to regulatory and reimbursement requirements.

Home health and hospice documentation often includes:

  • Clinical observations made in non-clinical environments
  • Structured requirements tied to reimbursement and regulation
  • Risk-sensitive language related to safety, decline, or end-of-life care
  • Significant variation across disciplines, visit types, and patient contexts

Where generic AI breaks down

In these settings, AI tools based on general-purpose language models introduce risks related to accuracy, hallucinations, bias, privacy, and workflow fit — because they were not designed to operate within structured clinical, regulatory, and reimbursement frameworks.

In practice, organizations report that the additional oversight required to validate or correct AI-generated output can reduce — or even negate — anticipated efficiency gains, limiting adoption and ROI. As a result, organizations often remain stuck in pilot mode — investing time and effort in validation without achieving the scale or consistency required for meaningful return.

The right question

When evaluating an AI solution, the right question is not whether the AI tool can record a conversation and translate it into notes or whether the tool can reduce documentation, but whether it can consistently support high-quality clinical documentation at scale without increading burden or creating compliance risks.

Purpose-Built AI

What it means and why it drives operational impact

In care at home environments, purpose-built AI should be evaluated less as a point solution and more as foundational infrastructure — one designed to support regulated clinical workflows consistently over time.

Many AI platforms label themselves as “purpose-built,” but leaders must look past marketing language to truly scrutinize the way the technology is designed and deployed. In regulated clinical environments, purpose-built AI typically incorporates:

  • Domain-specific clinical intelligence, informed by real documentation patterns
  • Provider involvement in defining structure, logic, and validation criteria
  • Structured outputs aligned to required note components, in addition to free-text summaries
  • Grounding mechanisms that reduce fabricated or misattributed content
  • Privacy-conscious data handling, with explicit limits on data retention and reuse
Purpose-built AI

Research consistently shows that providers prefer AI systems that function as collaborative tools — preserving human oversight while reducing administrative load — rather than fully automated systems that completely bypass clinical judgment. These characteristics directly affect whether AI improves documentation time, supports compliance workflows, and earns provider trust — all prerequisites for driving ROI.
These design choices are what allow AI systems to move beyond experimentation and begin delivering durable efficiency, compliance support, and clinician adoption at scale.

# # #

This article is part 1 in a 4-part series. Come back next week for “Scalability, Security, and Governance.”

About Eleos

At Eleos, we believe the path to better healthcare is paved with provider-focused technology. Our purpose-built AI platform streamlines documentation, simplifies compliance and surfaces deep care insights to drive better client outcomes. Created using real-world care sessions and fine-tuned by our in-house clinical experts, our AI tools are scientifically proven to reduce documentation time by more than 70% and boost client engagement by 2x. With Eleos, providers are free to focus less on administrative tasks and more on what got them into this field in the first place: caring for their clients.

©2026 by The Rowan Report, Peoria, AZ. All rights reserved. This article originally appeared in The Rowan Report. One copy may be printed for personal use: further reproduction by permission only. editor@therowanreport.com

AI Adoption Risk in Home Health and Hospice

Artificial Intelligence

by Bill Dombi and Jason Bring, Arnall Golden Gregory LLP

AI Adoption in Home Health and Hospice

Accelerating Regulatory Risk

Law firm Arnall Golden Gregory LLP, Bill A. Dombi, Senior Counsel and Jason E. Bring, Partner, recently published an article on navigating the AI frontier. The article proposes legal guardrails for Home Health and Hospice providers. As AI adoption becomes more prevalent, so too does the risk of regulatory errors in nondiscrimination, HIPAA, and CMS reimbursement, among others.

by Bill Dombi and Jason Bring – Arnall Golden Gregory, LLP

Key Takeaways

AI adoption in home health and hospice...

Is accelerating regulatory risk with Section 1557 nondiscrimination rules, HIPAA obligations, and CMS reimbursement scrutiny creating new exposure around bias, PHI handling, ambient listening, AI-generated documentation, and improper reliance on predictive models

Common AI failure points

Unauthorized tools, biased algorithms, ambient-recording missteps, hallucinated documentation, and eligibility-prediction “coding bias,” now trigger audits, denials, False Claims Act exposure, breach allegations, and malpractice risk, especially where human oversight is weak or documentation is inconsistent.

Providers must strengthen AI governance and transparency

Including enterprise-grade vendor controls, business associate agreements, patient disclosure and consent protocols, model-bias testing, workforce training, documentation review, and a comprehensive AI Acceptable Use Policy backed by ongoing monitoring and interdisciplinary oversight.

Read the full article here

# # #

AI Adoption Risk Dombi
AI adoption risk Bring

AGG Healthcare and Post-Acute & Long-Term Care attorneys, Jason Bring and Bill Dombi, advise home health agencies, hospices, and technology vendors nationwide on AI governance, compliance, and reimbursement strategy. For questions about these issues or in general, please contact Jason and Bill.

OASIS, OASIS Everywhere!

Artificial Intelligence

by Tim Rowan, Editor Emeritus

OASIS, OASIS, Everywhere

At this year’s annual meeting of The National Alliance for Care at Home, one could not attend a general or breakout session or walk an aisle in the exhibit hall without hearing about artificial intelligence. After 27 years covering Home Health, Home Care, and Hospice technology, I have seen buzzwords come and go. Declared game-changers have evolved from Windows to the iPad, to smartphones, to telehealth, to Big Data, to the Internet itself.

Interestingly enough, the “game” never changed. Patients/clients, nurses/CNAs, claims, payroll, and A/R have always, and will always, keep owners, administrators, and managers sprinting. AI will bring massive changes, but not to these constants.

AI is a Supplement, not a Replacement

There is much concern, and a plethora of articles, about how easily AI can be abused, even with the most noble intentions. We have detected serious concern about a movement to allow AI to make clinical decisions. We concur that this is inappropriate. Advising clinical decisions, providing background on previous patients with similar symptoms, or quickly accumulating data on the history of a chronic condition, can benefit our patients and clients in ways no other technology has been able to do. Making clinical decisions is different in both kind and degree.

This is why we were impressed with the focus on supplementing over replacing that we witnessed in New Orleans.

Ambient Listening for OASIS

When WellSky acquired Kinnser, everyone wondered whether the Home Health EMR would improve or merely be maintained for its customer base. Longtime friend of The Rowan Report, and WellSky and former Fazzi consultant Cindy Campbell, RN, convinced us with her uncharacteristic effusiveness to take another look at the latest WellSky feature.

AI OASIS

How it works

During the OASIS visit, the nurse in the home logs into an app and places it between him/her and the patient. As the normal OASIS conversation takes place, the AI-enabled app not only hears but interprets every nuance of the chat. By the time the OASIS visit is over, the agency’s EMR has been fully populated. Every OASIS question has been answered, and every numerical rating field has been accurately completed.

Human touch

Wisely, WellSky allows no AI OASIS assessment to be saved or signed without review by a human. This is going to become standard practice as AI evolves, or at least it should be, the WellSky rep told us. Machine assistance is far removed from machine perfection. Nevertheless, she asserted, few changes are required by the reviewer, usually a QA nurse.

Beyond OASIS

In addition to streamlining the OASIS assessment visit, the new app gives voice reminders to each nurse of their daily and weekly schedule, and background information about each patient’s visit history, current condition, and goals.

But Wait, There's More

Our AI tour did not end at the WellSky booth. We lost count of the number of smaller companies that were demonstrating the exact same AI-assisted OASIS assessment. It was as though some unknown force ordered, “OK, everyone. It’s 2025. Roll out your Home Health AI functions.”

One of many

Roger is the name of one of the more evolved such apps, from the aptly named Roger Healthcare. We had interviewed co-founder Yunus Ansari several months ago and were impressed by the product’s progress since then. Like WellSky and the others, Roger claims 15-minute OASIS visits, 5-minutes routine visit notes, 2-minutes EMR syncing, and larger per-nurse patient caseloads without additional work time.

Where Do We Go From Here?

Clearly, AI is not a fad. It has already permeated Amazon, Facebook, and most gas and electric vehicles. In Home Health, Home Care, and Hospice, it promises to accelerate research, education, paperwork, and revenue cycle management. Here is the red line in the sand. When used to enhance the efficiency and working knowledge of a nurse, CNA, or non-medical caregiver, it will go a long way toward helping in-home care to keep up with budget cuts, reimbursement reductions, inflation, and nurse/caregiver shortages.

When used to replace the clinical expertise of physicians, nurses, CNAs, and even personal care assistants, it smacks of HAL, the renegade computer of 2001: A Space Odyssey. What we need to do as AI infiltrates more and more aspects of our lives, is constantly remind ourselves that it is only a tool, not a master.

# # #

Tim Rowan The Rowan Report
Tim Rowan The Rowan Report
Tim Rowan is a 30-year home care technology consultant who co-founded and served as Editor and principal writer of this publication for 25 years. He continues to occasionally contribute news and analysis articles under The Rowan Report’s new ownership. He also continues to work part-time as a Home Care recruiting and retention consultant. More information: RowanResources.com
Tim@RowanResources.com

©2025 by The Rowan Report, Peoria, AZ. All rights reserved. This article originally appeared in The Rowan Report. One copy may be printed for personal use: further reproduction by permission only. editor@therowanreport.com

It’s More than Just Payroll

Admin

by Kristin Rowan, Editor

Product Review: It's Payroll...and so Much More

Evolution into Health Care

I’m sure many of you remember the days before automated processes. Hand-written notes, paper forms, and paychecks that were filled in on a typewriter. Those days are behind us (mostly) in care at home with the alphabet soup of technology we have today: EMR, EVV, EHR, PECOS, API, EDI, UB-04, ADP

Technology evolves in unpredictable paths and patterns. And the best developers adjust to that evolution. That is the story of a software provider that we recently interviewed. What started as a general payroll and HR software evolved and steered the developers toward health care. Now, that payroll company is built for care at home and includes so much more than standard payroll. Introducing…Viventium

Home Health and Home Care Enhancements

When the Viventium team started their software, it was not industry specific. But some key clients put home care on their radar six years ago and the software development shifted to meet the unique needs of care at home agencies. Today, Viventium is a workforce management system that is built for care at home and includes features not found in general payroll software. Some of Viventium’s capabilities include:

Applicant tracking

Job board integration

Hiring data and talent recognition

Recruitment insights and analysis

Onboarding

Tax filing

Employee self-help section

Integration with Tapcheck

Time and Attendance approval

Time off requests

Scheduling and Open Shift management

Continuing education tracking

Benefits management

ACA compliance tracking and reporting

Automated blended rate payroll

Integrations and Automations

Viventium is already working with a handful of EMRs for direct integration. The system is also integrated with TapCheck for on-demand pay and with Nevvon for CEUs. For EMRs that are not fully integrated, they offer pre-built exports that can handle different export formats. Viventium can import information from virtually any patient record system.

Once the payroll system is set up for your agency, or agencies, many of the workflows are automated, relieving time and stress on your staff and saving you money on recruitment, retention, FTEs and missed visits. The staff responsible for new hires will experience such automations as pre-filling demographic information everywhere once it is entered once, customizable CEU requirement task assignment and reminders, tax preparation and filing, sharing job listings across multiple job boards, and payroll generation from EVV import.

Industry Differentiators

Standard payroll companies and software are perfectly capable of running weekly time cards and calculating state and federal taxes. Most of them automate direct deposit. Very few have the built-in capability to change hourly rates during a shift. Viventium allows agencies to customize visit types, names, and rates, allowing an employee to clock in at the start of a shift and adjust their job code as needed throughout the day. Even fewer calculate overtime, benefits eligibility, sick leave accrual, and daily overtime for per visit employees automatically. And Viventium is the first payroll software I’ve come across that is piece-rate compliant, calculating rest pay and non-productive time.

Viventium Payroll

Customizations

HHAs are not “one size fits all” and neither is Viventium. The list of available customizations keeps growing. Agencies can apply custom parameters to:

  • CEU requirements based on license type, expertise, PiPs, etc.
  • Benefit information
  • Reminders for expirations and deadlines on performance reviews, licenses, certifications, and CEUs
  • Workflows for digital onboarding documents, progress tracking, and completion
  • Re-hire eligibility
  • Payroll and overtime calculations for one employee working across agency locations
  • Reporting, analytics, data, in addition to the static analytics dashboard

User Reviews

As a small business with very little need for robust HR systems, payroll software is not really on my “must have” list. Still, I’d be remiss if I didn’t consider using a system with this many “extras”. But, don’t take my word for it. Here is what Viventium customers have to say:

Hospital System with 11-50 Employees

“I enjoy the software and it beats most if not all payroll systems out there for attractiveness to use and navigate through. Very user friendly. When they update the product they always have a training associated with it. It easy to use for our employees as well.”

Home Care Agency with 51-200 Employees

“Viventium has really helped my company by providing payroll services. As a new and small business owner, the “V” team has been patient, helpful and always a pleasure to work with. In our first 2 years, the service has been very helpful and timely. I am very happy I decided to go with the “V” team. Highly recommend for payroll services.”

∼ Carlos, SYNERGY HomeCare in Palm Bay.

Health and Wellness with 1,001-5,000 Employees

“It’s not just another payroll or HR tool, it feels thoughtfully built for real people, especially those of us in healthcare….

Plus, having everything from benefits administration to compliance tracking in one place has saved me countless hours. It’s helped our team stay organized and focused on what really matters: supporting our staff and growing our business.”

Review

In the care at home industry, Viventium is relatively new in comparison with other systems. Outside of care at home, Viventium is trusted by more than 3,000 companies and has the experience and expertise to support more than just payroll, but all workforce management.

The user interface is pleasant and visually pleasing enhancing its very user-friendly, easy to use platform. 3rd party tools are fully integrated, keeping every feature under a single sign-on. Also included is an Android and iOS app for your staff to track and view hours, pay rates, benefits, and education all in one place.

Viventium Payroll Case Study

The automation and customization reduces payroll prep time, improves compliance and accuracy, strengthens retention and recruitment, eliminates physical paperwork for onboarding, and much more. This part is not my opinion, but is based on this efficiency study.

Final Thoughts

If you’re not using Viventium, it is worth exploring. The potential to eliminate multiple software systems and logins is real. The savings in time, retention, and reduced errors are measurable. Viventium is the best kept secret in care at home and based on my conversations with their team, we haven’t heard the last of Viventium’s innovation and industry-specific features.

# # #

Kristin Rowan, Editor
Kristin Rowan, Editor

Kristin Rowan has been working at The Rowan Report since 2008. She is the owner and Editor-in-chief of The Rowan Report, the industry’s most trusted source for care at home news, and speaker on Artificial Intelligence and Lone Worker Safety and state and national conferences.

She also runs Girard Marketing Group, a multi-faceted boutique marketing firm specializing in content creation, social media management, and event marketing.  Connect with Kristin directly kristin@girardmarketinggroup.com or www.girardmarketinggroup.com

©2025 by The Rowan Report, Peoria, AZ. All rights reserved. This article originally appeared in The Rowan Report. One copy may be printed for personal use: further reproduction by permission only. editor@therowanreport.com

**Vendors never pay for product reviews nor does a vendor’s sponsor status influence the content of the review.

AI Eases Clinician Burnout

Artificial Intelligence

by Curantis Solutions

AI in Hospice and Palliative Care

Eases Clinician Burnout and Drives Retention

In hospice and palliative care, clinicians are your most valuable and most vulnerable resource. They’re the heart of care delivery, and often the largest expense line item on your budget. But today, many are walking a tightrope between compassion fatigue and after-hours documentation burnout. Hospice organizations can’t afford to lose them. And with AI-powered tools, you don’t have to.

Clinician burnout Is a crisis and a cost center

Hospice nurses and interdisciplinary team members are burning out at unsustainable rates. The emotional weight of their work is immense, but it’s the after-hours charting, documentation delays, and system inefficiencies that often push them over the edge. The cost of clinician turnover is staggering. Onboarding and training a new hospice nurse takes time, money, and trust, and patients feel the impact, too. 

AI bridges the gap without replacing the human touch

Curantis Solutions is leading the way with AI that lightens the load. Our embedded AI assistant, EVA, supports clinicians in real-time, reducing documentation friction and eliminating the need to chart late into the evening. 

How AI may help

  • Voice-to-text documentation
    • captures patient-specific details naturally, as they happen
  • Smart prompts and reminders
    • prevent missed data points and reduce rework
  • Less screen time after shifts
    • improves work-life balance and job satisfaction
  • Clinicians feel more supported and less likely to leave
AI in Hospice and Palliative Care Curantis Solutions

Retain the staff you've worked so hard to hire

When your staff hears that another organization doesn’t have modern tech or AI tools? They stay. Providing intuitive, hospice-specific tools isn’t just about efficiency. It’s about creating a culture that respects their time, honors their energy, and values their expertise. 

AI as a strategic investment in care and culture

Hospice leaders are being called to solve two problems at once:

  • Deliver exceptional, person-centered care
  • Do it with fewer resources and higher costs

AI-powered software like Curantis helps close this gap. By streamlining documentation and workflow, we help you preserve the well-being of your clinicians, which, in turn, protects your operations and your outcomes. 

Imagine this...

  • No more nurses charting late into the night
  • Fewer resignations and higher morale
  • Patients receiving care from clinicians who aren’t drained, but present and energized

# # #

Let's make clinician burnout a thing of the past

Explore how Curantis Solutions empowers your team and strengthens your bottom line. Contact us today to schedule a demo and see how we are making your software experience refreshingly simple with ChartBoost AI. 

Contact us today to see a demo and learn how we are making your software experience refreshingly simple. 

© 2025 This blog article originally appeared on the Curantis Solutions website and is reprinted with permission. For more information, please contact Curantis Solutions directly.

AI in Hospice: 3 Questions Before Adopting

Artificial Intelligence

by Curantis Solutions

AI in Hospice

3 question to ask before adoption

AI in healthcare

Artificial intelligence (AI) is transforming healthcare. From voice-to-text documentation to predictive analytics, AI promises to streamline operations, reduce clinician burden, and improve outcomes. However, in hospice and palliative care, where care is deeply personal and the margin for error is razor thin, adopting AI cannot be treated as just another trend. It must be thoughtful, mission-aligned, and clinically appropriate.

AI in hospice

Hospice leaders are under pressure. Staff shortages are real. Regulatory demands like Hospice HOPE are intensifying. Vendor inboxes are flooded with promises of automation, optimization, and return on investment (ROI). It is easy to feel like you must adopt AI quickly just to keep up.

But the truth is, not all AI is ready for hospice and palliative care. And not all hospice organizations are ready to implement it effectively. The stakes are too high to rush.

If your hospice or palliative care organization is exploring AI, here are three critical questions to ask before making a decision:

1. Is the AI built for the way hospice and palliative care work?

Hospice and palliative care are fundamentally different from other healthcare environments. The workflows are interdisciplinary. Much of the documentation relies on narrative detail. Clinicians manage complex emotional, spiritual, and medical needs at the same time. Care is not episodic or transactional. It is longitudinal, values-driven, and highly individualized.

Many AI tools on the market today were built for hospitals or outpatient clinics. They may offer efficiencies in acute care but fail in hospice because they do not understand the subtleties of team-based care, psychosocial documentation, or end-of-life symptom management.

AI for Hospice

Ask the vendor: Has your AI been developed specifically for hospice or palliative care? Or are you expecting our team to adapt to your tool?

Healthcare isn't hospice

Some hospices have tried generic AI dictation tools and found them inadequate. They could not capture the nuance of hospice documentation, especially when it comes to describing spiritual distress, family dynamics, or legacy work. Other teams tried predictive tools that produced frequent, non-actionable alerts that distracted the clinical team and created more work, not less.

Hospice AI must be purpose-built. It needs to support interdisciplinary team meetings, comply with documentation standards like HOPE, and align with Medicare Conditions of Participation. If the tool does not understand your workflow, it will only add friction.

2. Will this AI solution actually save time, or will it create more work?

AI should make your clinicians’ lives easier, not harder. Unfortunately, many solutions promise time savings but fail to deliver because they are poorly implemented or require too much manual oversight.

Here is where hidden costs show up. If your team needs to log into separate platforms, copy and paste information, or manually verify AI-generated content line by line, the benefits quickly disappear. Add in the time it takes to train staff, troubleshoot bugs, and manage updates, and you might find you are investing more time than you are saving.

Ask the vendor: What does your implementation and training process look like? What kind of support do you provide after go-live?

AI in Hospice<br />

Responsible AI vendors should provide more than software. They should offer a clear rollout plan with defined milestones, retraining sessions for staff turnover, and a roadmap for future enhancements. Without this, even the most impressive AI tool will fail to achieve meaningful ROI.

You also want to ensure that your team can trust the AI. If it produces content that needs to be heavily edited or raises questions about accuracy, clinicians will disengage. The best AI makes documentation feel intuitive, not burdensome.

Ultimately, the right solution should reduce charting time, improve documentation quality, and give your clinicians more time for direct patient care. Do not just ask 

what the AI can do. Ask what the experience of using it will be like for your team on day one, day 30, and day 365.

3. Does the AI preserve your mission and center the patient?

This is perhaps the most important question of all. Hospice care is defined by its human connection. Patients and families count on your team to be present, compassionate, and attentive during the most vulnerable moments of life. Any technology you introduce must uphold that standard.

Ask yourself: Does this tool enhance our ability to serve patients meaningfully? Or does it get in the way?

AI should never replace the clinician’s presence. It should support that presence by taking on administrative tasks, summarizing clinical notes, or preparing IDG summaries. It should make care feel more personal, not less.

There is a real risk in adopting tools that do not align with your mission. Some AI solutions are focused solely on efficiency. Others may depersonalize care by reducing complex human experiences into checkboxes or canned phrases. If the technology distances your team from the bedside, it is not the right fit.

Ethical, mission-aligned AI empowers your team. It helps clinicians spend less time documenting and more time connecting. For chaplins, it supports spiritual care providers in crafting better notes. It assists social workers in capturing family dynamics. Finally, it helps the entire team stay informed without increasing their cognitive load.

AI in Hospice

Final Thoughts

Thoughtful evaluation and the right questions make all the difference

The conversation about AI in hospice and palliative care is just beginning. There is enormous potential to reduce burnout, improve quality, and strengthen compliance. But realizing that potential requires more than excitement. It requires asking the right questions, involving the right stakeholders, and choosing tools that are built for this environment.

Before you adopt AI, pause and evaluate:

  • Is this solution designed for how we deliver care?
  • Will this save time or increase workload?
  • Does this align with our mission and center the patient?

If you can answer yes to all three, then you are on the path to responsible, effective AI adoption.
Hospice and palliative care deserve nothing less.

Eleos Navigates Eligibility Risk

Admin

Eleos Navigates Eligibility Risk

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

Contact:                  Amanda Wells

awells@sloanepr.com

Eleos Launches AI Scanner to Navigate Medicaid Eligibility Risk in Real Time

The new OBBBA AI scanner uses Eleos’ ambient AI technology to alert providers of patient eligibility changes, preserving revenue and ensuring care continuity amid sweeping Medicaid policy changes

BOSTON, MA, Aug. 20, 2025 — Eleos, the leading AI platform in post-acute care, today announced the launch of the OBBBA (One Big Beautiful Bill Act) AI scanner, the first real-time tool to proactively detect potential changes to Medicaid eligibility during client sessions. The OBBBA AI scanner uses Eleos’ purpose-built ambient AI scribing technology to inform providers about changes that may impact coverage, giving them time to act before Medicaid coverage lapses. The tool was launched in response to sweeping Medicaid funding cuts and eligibility rule changes.

Eligibility Check

Providers can select Medicaid-related “themes” to track such as housing status, diagnosis updates, or life events like marriage or aging out of eligibility. The OBBBA scanner captures contextual clues that could trigger changes in coverage. Providers use this information to take action to prevent eligibility loss, reduce care disruption and maintain treatment continuity. For care organizations, this means fewer denials and greater revenue stability, as well as better client support.

The OBBBA AI scanner arrives at a critical moment: new Medicaid rules introduce shorter retroactive coverage windows, semi-annual (versus annual) redeterminations and narrowed eligibility criteria — all of which lead to a higher risk of churn, especially for vulnerable groups such as people with serious mental illness and those experiencing housing instability.

Eleos Navigates Eligibility Risk

“We’re hearing from leaders across the country that Medicaid redetermination changes are already causing confusion and fear among clients and providers alike. The OBBBA AI scanner gives providers the earliest possible warning via real-time insights so they can protect coverage and avoid treatment disruptions, ensuring clients continue to receive necessary and life-saving care. This kind of provider-first technology is at the core of Eleos.”

Alon Joffe

Co-founder and CEO, Eleos

Embedded seamlessly within the Eleos Documentation experience, the tracker works in tandem with providers’ existing workflows, requiring no additional software or manual data entry.

Industry leader sees Eleos scanner as critical tool

“OBBBA has created significant uncertainty for the behavioral health sector, and organizations need every possible advantage to navigate it. Properly deployed, purpose-built AI tools help organizations navigate an ever-changing landscape while also promoting the health and well-being of clients and communities.”

Chuck Ingoglia

President and CEO, National Council for Mental Wellbeing

Rationale

The OBBBA AI scanner builds on Eleos’ mission to free care providers from administrative burdens and enable better, more data-informed care. Deployed in over 200 organizations in 30-plus states, Eleos is the most-used AI solution in behavioral health, substance use disorder (SUD) treatment and post-acute care. Its suite of AI-powered documentation and compliance solutions has been proven to reduce documentation time by more than 70%, double client engagement and drive 3-4x better treatment outcomes. 

For more information about the OBBBA AI scanner or to request a demo, visit www.eleos.health.

# # #

About Eleos

Eleos is the leading AI platform for behavioral health, substance use disorder, home health and hospice. At Eleos, we believe the path to better care is paved with provider-focused technology. Our purpose-built AI platform streamlines documentation, simplifies revenue cycle management and surfaces deep care insights to drive better client outcomes. Created using the industry’s largest database of real-world sessions and fine-tuned by our in-house clinical experts, our AI tools are scientifically proven to reduce documentation time by more than 70%, boost client engagement by 2x and improve symptom reduction by 3-4x. With Eleos, post-acute care providers are free to focus less on administrative tasks and more on what got them into this field in the first place: caring for their clients.

Paul Joiner: On the Record

Admin

by Kristin Rowan, Editor

Paul Joiner

On the Record

Paul Joiner, CEO of HHAeXchange, sat down with The Rowan Report Editor Kristin Rowan to discuss the company’s new headquarters in Manhattan, the company culture he’s creating, his dedication to support those helping our most vulnerable populations.

In His Own Words

The Rowan Report: Paul, thank you for taking the time to talk to us. HHAeXchange is going through some significant growth recently. And now you’ve moved your headquarters from Long Island to Manhattan, correct? How did that decision come about?

Paul Joiner: HHAeXchange has been in Manhattan for a long time. Sandata, who we acquired earlier this year, was in Long Island. But, the move was planned with or without Sandata. We needed a nice sized space to convene people. We valued a large, multi-purpose meeting space over individual office space. It’s a space where the teams can meet when they come to town, where we can host clients, and larger company meetings.

RR: How does the new space support your team?

Paul: The majority of our team is remote. I don’t think remote work is healthy for everyone. It varies from person to person. It’s not a long-term healthy option. Returning back to the office 9-5 five days a week isn’t practical and not all that healthy either. We have created policies, a workspace, and a culture where people are invited to visit. Some come 2-3 days per week. Some only once a month. We maintain flexibility for our teams to work when and where they need to work. Being a single parent, for example, is really hard, so we stay flexible to support single parents to be where they need to be.

At the same time, we’ve seen the benefit of the connection and how much more healthy it is by physically coming together. For the younger workforce, they are enjoying getting together and coming into the office. We have to support our younger employees and their professional development. How do you professionally develop via Zoom or Teams? Physically coworking and promoting good and active environments compel people to come into the office. To build connections, you have to be together, not just on video.

RR: You have workers across the country, though. How does that work?

Paul: We have the main office here in Manhattan, a large and growing office in Minneapolis, and a smaller office in Miami. We try to keep people in areas that make it easy to meet. However, we do have some roles with certain criteria that allows for mostly remote work. Those teams come to one of the offices to meet when they can. We’ve hosted team meetings here and in Minneapolis recently.

RR: Has this new meeting space had an impact on the company culture?

Paul: Yeah, it has improved. We are having real, honest conversations about what needs to be improved. The team effort is the way we win and our teams understand that. We also understand that working hard doesn’t mean foregoing your life and the ability to recharge.

Work hard, be passionate, and motivate people with your mission and vision. The people we serve don’t have it easy, they are supporting the most vulnerable people.

RR: In a recent statement, you said that the new location will support collaboration and innovation. Do you have new features on the horizon? Are you investing in AI capabilities?

Paul: We have a lot in the works. We have a new mobile app in the beta phase that we’ll be rolling out that I’m really excited about. It’s actually an update, but it’s so massive that it’s basically new. We’re working on data analytics and data tracking for some of our largest clients.  We’ve consolidated some screens into one spot to streamline and make the user more efficient. A lot of what we’re working on is foundational. We’re focusing on supporting companies as they scale.

RR: Are you looking into AI, either within the HHAeXchange platform, or in a partner?

Paul: Yeah, of course. AI is the future and it’s everywhere. We are looking at ways to return time to users, make it easier to train users, and make things easier on caregivers. We will try to generate more buzz around AI, but not until there’s real, tangible value. AI definitely needs to be part of our strategy, but being smart where we apply it to truly get the value-add for our clients. It has to improve the quality of life for the user. Does it improve the ability of caregivers to care for people?

Paul Joiner, CEO, HHAeXchange

RR: Do you have any additional acquisition or growth plans for the second half of 2025?

Paul: There’s a lot going on in the marketplace right now. A lot of our clients are growing really well also. So, we’re sort of in a heads-down mode. There’s a handful of things we’re looking at. Right now, I’m really excited about being a bigger participant across the full continuum of care for our populations. There are some opportunities to innovate and evolve to support integrated care over the next few years. I’ll just leave it at that…for now.

RR: Paul, thank you for joining me today. It’s always a pleasure.

# # #

About HHAeXchange

Founded in 2008, HHAeXchange is the leading technology platform for homecare and self-direction program management. Developed specifically for Medicaid home and community-based services (HCBS), HHAeXchange connects state agencies, managed care organizations, providers, and caregivers through its intuitive web-based platform, enabling unparalleled communication, transparency, efficiency, and compliance. In 2024, HHAeXchange expanded through the strategic acquisitions of Sandata, Cashé Software, and Generations Homecare System, strengthening its commitment to advancing the industry.

About Paul Joiner

Paul Joiner is an accomplished executive with extensive leadership experience in the healthcare sector. Currently serving as a Board Member at AssistRx, Joiner has held prominent positions, including Chief Executive Officer at both HHAeXchange and Kipu Health. Previous roles include Chief Operating Officer as well as Executive Vice President and General Manager at Availity, and Senior Vice President and General Manager of Health Plan. Joiner also served as Vice President of Client Engagement and Business Development at Midas+ Solutions, Xerox Healthcare Provider Solutions. Educational qualifications include a Master of Accountancy from Belmont University and a Bachelor of Accountancy from the University of Mississippi.

Kristin Rowan, Editor
Kristin Rowan, Editor

Kristin Rowan has been working at The Rowan Report since 2008. She is the owner and Editor-in-chief of The Rowan Report, the industry’s most trusted source for care at home news, and speaker on Artificial Intelligence and Lone Worker Safety and state and national conferences.

She also runs Girard Marketing Group, a multi-faceted boutique marketing firm specializing in content creation, social media management, and event marketing.  Connect with Kristin directly kristin@girardmarketinggroup.com or www.girardmarketinggroup.com

©2025 by The Rowan Report, Peoria, AZ. All rights reserved. This article originally appeared in The Rowan Report. One copy may be printed for personal use: further reproduction by permission only. editor@therowanreport.com

 

HIPAA Compliance Voice Activation

Admin

by Curantis Solutions

HIPAA Compliance for Voice Activated Technology

HIPAA (Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act) compliance is critical in the healthcare field, particularly regarding any technology that handles patient information, including HIPAA-compliant voice technology. Understanding the implications of HIPAA is essential for ensuring that innovations in healthcare technology do not compromise patient data privacy regulations.

Patient Privacy Protection

HIPAA enforces strict privacy protections for all patient data, including voice recordings and summaries. Voice recognition technology in healthcare must ensure that data is only accessible to authorized personnel. Any voice-activated system must adhere to HIPAA security measures for handling Protected Health Information (PHI).

Data Security Requirements

Voice-activated systems must implement safeguards to protect patient information from unauthorized access and breaches. This includes both physical and electronic security measures, such as:

Voice Activation HIPAA
  • Encryption
    • Data should be encrypted both in transit and at rest to prevent unauthorized access.
  • Access Controls
    • Systems must restrict access to only those who need to know, using multi-factor authentication and role-based permissions.
  • Audit Trails
    • Voice-activated technologies should log all access activity, tracking who accessed data, when, and what specific information was retrieved.

HIPAA Training Requirements for Voice-Activated Systems

HIPAA emphasizes the need for staff training and awareness regarding handling PHI in voice-recognition software. Training programs should cover:

  • Best Practices
    • Staff should be instructed on correct voice command usage to minimize accidental PHI disclosures in public or unsecured environments.
  • Identifying PHI
    • Employees should learn to recognize and protect sensitive patient data when interacting with voice-activated systems.

Data Minimization Principles

Under HIPAA, organizations should limit data collection to only what is necessary for specific tasks. This includes:

  • Minimal Data Handling
    • Only essential PHI should be processed and stored.
  • Anonymization Processes
    • Voice-activated systems should anonymize data when full patient identification is unnecessary, reducing security risks.

Incident Response Protocol

In the event of a data breach involving voice-activated patient summaries, organizations must follow HIPAA-compliant response steps:

  • Incident Reporting
    • Immediate breach investigation and reporting per HIPAA timelines.
  • Notification Requirements
    • Patients must be notified if their PHI has been compromised, along with steps taken to mitigate risks.

Summary

HIPAA compliance directly impacts how voice-activated patient summaries are implemented in healthcare. Ensuring compliance requires:

  • Robust data security measures
  • Thorough staff training
  • Strict vendor agreements
  • Comprehensive privacy protections

By aligning voice-activated patient summaries with HIPAA regulations, healthcare organizations can enhance patient care, safeguard sensitive information, and build trust with patients and families.

# # #

About Curantis Solutions

Curantis Solutions was founded on a desire to put hospice and palliative care first. We are dedicated to radically transforming standard electronic health records into a refreshingly simple and intuitive experience so that providers can keep their focus where it matters most – on the patients and families they serve. 

With a genuine culture of caring, we have assembled a team of highly talented individuals who are passion-driven and feel connected to their role in supporting the bigger mission of enabling high-quality end-of-life care. From forward-thinking technologists to hospice and palliative care experts, and every role in between, our team works with great integrity, accountability and responsiveness to bridge the latest technology with smart design to keep patient care at the center of what we do.

©2025 This article was originally published by Curantis Solutions and is reprinted with permission. For additional information or to request permission, contact Curantis Solutions.

AI in Home Care

Artificial Intelligence

by Laurie Orlov, Founder, Aging and Health Technology Watch

The Future of AI in Home Care

New Research Report

Wed, 06/04/2025

PORT SAINT LUCIE, FL, UNITED STATES, June 4, 2025 /EINPresswire.com/ — The home care industry is facing a crisis. Driven by demographic shifts, longer life expectancy, and rising rates of chronic illness and cognitive decline, the demand for in-home personal care and home health care is surging. This will accelerate as the baby boomers age into their later years – in January, the oldest of the 76 million baby boomers will turn 80. At the same time, the care industries will face a critical shortage of all categories of care delivery, with millions of additional workers needed over the next decade. Against this backdrop, AI technology has emerged to help older adults in multiple ways. In a 2023 report, The Future of AI and Older Adults, AI was already able to produce insights about a person’s health needs and offer a chatbot to help with post-hospital care. In a subsequent 2023 report, AI and the Future of Care Work, it was apparent that AI could help generate an appropriate care plan and that an ‘AI Caregiver’ role was emerging to supplement in-person care delivery. In the 2024 report, The Future of AI in Senior Living and Care, AI was being used to analyze hospital discharge information to compare patient needs to nursing home capacity. 

Today there are many more initiatives and new possibilities for addressing multiple aspects of both private duty home care and home health operations, including assistance with recruiting and onboarding workers, using data to create and update care-related documents, and introducing AI agents that can be assigned to complete specific tasks. As current industry leaders note, AI tech is playing a role in care oversight and enabling the creating of hybrid models – an increasingly likely combination of in-person care supplemented with AI.

This report draws insights from experts across home care, home health care, plus software and device providers, and healthcare sectors to examine how AI is currently being used and suggest what lies ahead within the next five years.

The report can be found at this link: https://www.ageinplacetech.com/page/future-ai-home-care

# # #

Laurie Orlov The Future of AI in Home Care
Laurie Orlov The Future of AI in Home Care

Laurie M. Orlov, a tech industry veteran, writer, speaker, elder care advocate, is the founder of Aging and Health Technology Watch  market research, trends, blogs and reports that provide thought leadership, analysis and guidance about health and aging-related technologies and services that enable boomers and seniors to sustain and improve their quality of life. In her previous career, Laurie spent many years in the technology industry, including 9 years at analyst firm Forrester Research. She has spoken regularly and delivered keynote speeches at forums, industry consortia, conferences, and symposia, most recently on the business of technology for boomers and seniors. She advises large organizations as well as non-profits and entrepreneurs about trends and opportunities in the age-related technology market.  Her perspectives have been quoted in the Wall Street Journal, the New York Times, Vox, Senior Housing News, CNN Health, AARP Bulletin and Consumer Reports. She has a graduate certification in Geriatric Care Management from the University of Florida and a BA in Music from the University of Rochester. Laurie has provided testimony about technology at a Senate Aging Committee hearing and has consulted to AARP.  Advisory clients have included AARP, AOL, Argentum, Bose, Calix, CDW, Microsoft, Novartis, and Philips. Her reports include: The Market Overview Technology for Aging 2025The Future of AI in Senior Living and CareThe User Experience Needs An Upgrade 2024The Future of AI and Older and Older Adults 2023The Future of Care Work and Older Adults 2023The Future of Sensors and Older Adults 2022Beyond DIY: The Future of Smart Homes and Older Adults 2021, and The Future of Wearables and Older Adults 2021. Laurie has been named one of the Women Leaders in VoiceTop 50 Influencers in Aging by Next Avenue and one of the Women leading global innovation on AgeTech. 

©2025 by Aging and Health Technology Watch. All rights reserved. This introduction and link are printed with permission from the author. For more information or to request usage rights, please contact Laurie Orlov

Patient Data Access

Artificial Intelligence

by Kristin Rowan, Editor

Access to Patient Data

Tighter than Fort Knox

Access to patient data has always been tricky, even for the patient. Every doctor’s office, hospital, urgent care center, home health agency, and nursing facility uses their own system to house medical records. With concerns over HIPAA violations, that data is secured, sometimes in several ways simultaneously. A breach in that system could spell big trouble for the medical agency and the software company that provided it. Even in the age of electronic medical records, it is difficult to access those records without proof of identity, a signature in triplicate, and an oath punishable by death that you are allowed access to the information. (Okay, I may be exaggerating on that last one just a bit.)

3rd Party Access

Even more difficult than accessing patient data as the patient or the patient’s doctor or caregiver is accessing the data as a service provider:

  • Consultants who help agencies with operational efficiency, documentation, software implementation, etc.
  • QAPI advisors who help with reporting and training
  • Data analytics companies who interpret information and provide meaning behind numbers.

Who Owns the Data?

One of the big questions in these cases is who owns the data. Each party seems to claim some ownership. Medical agencies believe they own the data because the information doesn’t exist without inputing it during a patient visit. Electronic medical records claim ownership based on housing the information in the system they created, designed, and built. I, along with many others I assume, believe the data belongs to the patient. It is being used by the medical agency to perform services and housed by the software company much like a storage facility. But, the information should travel with the patient. 

It's a Bot!

Skilled nursing facilities and other providers often hire data analytics companies to help assess their business. One such company, Real Time, provides data analytics services using facility and patient data. Real Time accesses this data using log-in credentials provided by the facilities. Due to the volume of data and the time it takes to sift through a robust EHR system, Real Time uses bots to comb through the system and download the necessary information. 

Roadblock

This system works well for analytics companies and consultants to access more data quickly and provide faster, more thorough answers to their clients. The system doesn’t work well when the software housing the data enables CAPTCHA on its log-in page. CAPTCHA is specifically designed to keep bots out. In 2022, PointClickCare started using CAPTCHA on users they thought were bots. In 2023, PointClickCare used images so indecipherable that even humans couldn’t solve.

Request Denied

Real Time was losing access to its accounts. Agencies were losing the data analytics they contracted to receive. Real Time and PointClickCare entered discussion to provide access to the data. Real Time alleges that the solutions PointClickCare agreed to would only allow access to 30% of the data needed. Additional negotiations ended without an agreement. It seems PointClickCare ended the negotiations.

Fight for Your Right to...Data

In January of 2024, Real Time sued PointClickCare claiming unfair competition and tortious interference, among others. A district court issued an injunction to stop PointClickCare from using indecipherable CAPTCHA images and from deactivating Real Time’s accounts. PointClickCare appealed the decision to the Fourth Circuit.

Interpreting the Law

The Fourth Circuit upheld the district court ruling. The significance in the ruling is that the court interpreted some previously ambiguous language in the Cures Act exceptions to the information blocking rules. Specifically, the court interpreted the phrase “cannot reach agreeable terms” to mean that both parties attempt to reach an agreement in “good faith” using “reasonable” and “genuine” effort. The court also stated that the parties must have “articulable reasons why the parties cannot come to an agreement.” While this may seem like a minor ruling, the impact of the interpretation of the exceptions could reach much farther than this law suit.

I Object!

PointClickCare requested a rehearing after the Fourth Circuit decision. The American Hospital Assocition and Electronic Health Record Association filed briefs supporting PointClickCare in the lawsuit and in the petition for a rehearing. On April 23, 2025, The US Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit denied the petition for review. 

Paving the Way for Interoperability

The Fourth Circuit decision upholds the final rule from HHS implementing the Cures Act disincentives for information blocking. This decision and the denial of the petition for en banc review could have widespread implications. EHR companies must use the same access rules for every user. No more tricky images to stump consultants. No limiting access to 30% of the data.

The use of artificial intelligence-based software that can access EHR data without standard API connectivity could be the next step. Without needing permission to access and download data, switching software companies becomes easier. Sharing patient data with other medical providers is now a simple task. A patient could access their medical records with a single log-in.

Final Thoughts

I anticipate this will not be a decision that is accepted easily. I see more objections, lawsuits, and arguments from the AHA, the EHRA, and individual software providers and consultants. The decision has the potential to reach into other industries. AI will continue to evolve in ways we haven’t even anticipated. This certainly will not solve the issues of access to data or interoperability, but it’s a good first step.

Read the related articles on interoperability from Netsmart. Part 1 | Part 2

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Kristin Rowan, Editor
Kristin Rowan, Editor

Kristin Rowan has been working at The Rowan Report since 2008. She is the owner and Editor-in-chief of The Rowan Report, the industry’s most trusted source for care at home news, and speaker on Artificial Intelligence and Lone Worker Safety and state and national conferences.

She also runs Girard Marketing Group, a multi-faceted boutique marketing firm specializing in content creation, social media management, and event marketing.  Connect with Kristin directly kristin@girardmarketinggroup.com or www.girardmarketinggroup.com

©2025 by The Rowan Report, Peoria, AZ. All rights reserved. This article originally appeared in The Rowan Report. One copy may be printed for personal use: further reproduction by permission only. editor@therowanreport.com