Attendance expected to rise for NAHC’s annual meeting in SD
By LEE LANDENBERGER
HHBR Managing Editor
This coming weekend, the faithful begin arriving in San Diego for homecare’s biggest annual meeting, giving them a chance to mingle with fellow home healthcare workers, learn some new tricks through the many seminars that will be offered, examine new products, and ponder the future of their turbulent industry.
The National Association for Home Care’s (NAHC; Washington) Annual Meeting and HOMECARExpo will attract primarily owners, administrators, directors, and those who control the purse strings of homecare agencies, visiting nurse associations, and hospices from around the nation. Buying new products is quite a lure to the meeting. Statistics given out by NAHC reflect the urge to buy as 45% of those attending will represent "the highest level of buying authority agency owners or top-level executives."
Last year’s annual NAHC meeting, held in Atlanta, featured about 4,000 attendees and 550 exhibitors. The number was lower than 1997’s annual meeting, held in Boston, in which about 5,400 home health workers attended. NAHC’s director of public relations, Valerie Tully, told HHBR on Monday that while she did not have final numbers for this year’s meeting, she expected the number of attendees to exceed last year’s number and the number of exhibitors to be about the same.
Keeping abreast of new products and applications was the No. 1 reason given for attending the expo, as 74% have said it was their prime motivation for attending. Not far behind, at 73%, was the opportunity to exchange ideas with their peers.
NAHC officials estimate from 3,000 to 4,000 home health workers will attend the annual meeting, whose theme is "Demography is Destiny." NAHC committee meetings begin Oct. 10, opening the way for many meetings and seminars to follow. The meeting wraps up the following Wednesday, Oct. 13.
Among the highlights are the Hospice Association of America’s annual meeting, which is on Monday, Oct. 11; two keynote address will be given Tuesday, Oct. 12, as NAHC President Val Halamandaris speaks on "Demography is Destiny: Creating a New Vision in Response to Mega-trends," and Carl Hammerschlag speaks about "Healing Individuals and Organizations Through Psychoneuroimmunology." The general session on Wednesday, Oct. 13, will feature Dr. Peter Johnson, a specialist in marketing strategies and strategic business planning, who will speak on "Managing the Turbulence of Change Facing Home Care in the New Millennium."
The annual meeting also features 19 program tracks with seminars in hospice, legal issues, home medical equipment, risk management, telehealth, and others.
It will be held at the San Diego Convention Center. For more information, call NAHC at (202) 547-7424.
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