Celebrating the 2026 exacare ai Awards Winners

It's 7 a.m. and an admissions director somewhere is deciding whether her building can take a patient. A few states away, a regional leader is helping her team get comfortable with a new way of working because she tried it first and it worked. Leaders like them work hard for the residents in their care, and we work hard for them. They're always on my mind, because exacare ai is only useful when it helps them do their jobs better. They're why the platform exists, and they're who we think about every time we decide what to build next.

At the exacare ai Summit this past spring, we spent time listening to our customers tell their own stories: how they'd reorganized intake, what it meant for their teams, how much faster their hospital partners were hearing back from them, and the difference it made for the residents in their care.

That's why we built the first exacare ai Awards, to recognize the operators and individuals doing great work in post-acute care with our platform. These people do challenging work that often happens far from any spotlight, but we've had a front-row seat to it, and exacare ai looks the way it does today because of them. They've asked us for features before we had them, told us when something wasn't working, tested products, taken reference calls on our behalf, and shown up in so many other ways. The people we honored showed us what excellence in post-acute care looks like: faster decisions, smoother handoffs, and better experiences for residents. This was our way of saying thank you, and we wanted to do it properly.

Here's how it came together.

How we built out the award categories

We landed on eleven award categories. Four go to organizations: Operator of the Year, and Innovation, Implementation, and Engagement Awards. Seven go to individuals: Champion of the Year, Power User, Frontline Impact, Community Builder, Quality of Care Champion, Partnership, and Advocate.

For the organizational awards, we started with the data, looking at how quickly teams respond to referrals, how deeply they use the platform, and more. We grouped teams by size so a single facility wasn't stacked up against a national operator, and we locked those groupings earlier in the year so acquisitions and divestitures didn't shuffle the field midstream. Our sales and operations teams, who work with these customers every day, then added context on the shortlists before the final vote. The winners are among the strongest in the areas their award recognizes: for example, Journey’s central intake now handles twice the referrals each day, and Hill Valley has reviewed more referrals on the platform than any other organization.

The individual awards started with nominations from the exacare ai team members who work most closely with our customers, and every nomination came with a story about why. That's what made these awards feel personal, and it's why the presenters had more than numbers to share when they announced each winner.

Then we got to work on a celebration worthy of the people we were honoring.

Celebrating our winners

On Sunday, October 11, our winners met us in Boston, and we took over the Harvard Art Museums for the evening. I had the easiest job in the company that night: MCing a room full of people with great stories to tell. Here's a look at who we celebrated.

Innovation Awards

For the organizations that didn't stop at using exacare ai the way we built it. They keep finding new ways to use the platform, they volunteer to pilot things we haven't finished yet, and they've changed how their own teams work as a result. A lot of what's in exacare ai today started as an idea from one of them.

• Cantata. Kickoff to go-live in four weeks, every referral platform connected, and a team that arrives at every call with a new idea.
• Franciscan Ministries. One of the most collaborative rollouts we've ever run, with a team that shares some of the sharpest feedback in our community.
• Omnia Healthcare Group, Citadel and Pavilion divisions. Two divisions launched two weeks apart, set out to beat the industry benchmarks, and did. They haven't stopped innovating since, and keep adding new products to get more out of exacare ai.
• Ignite Medical Resorts. Some of the best operating numbers of any customer on exacare ai, every core workflow in use, and a pilot of every product we've launched, all in service of better outcomes for the people in their care.
• Majestic Care. They gave themselves a month to learn the platform and were at full speed in three days, with the whole company live in two weeks. Now they're working closely with us on our Managed Care Agent product, and every call they join has cameras on and questions coming.

Implementations of the Year

All about the launch: how well the rollout was run, how thoroughly teams were trained, how smooth go-live was, and how quickly people actually started using exacare ai. Anyone who has changed or implemented new software knows the challenges. These winners made them look easy.

• Sharon Lane. The model of a clean single-site launch, with nearly every referral reviewed to a decision from day one and a team that’s often the first to reach out when something new goes live.
• Presbyterian Living. Presbyterian Living came from a legacy system, brought every facility live, and more than a year later still gets referrals to a decision at a rate among the best of any nonprofit on the platform.
• FutureCare. After a ton of diligent research, FutureCare launched all of its facilities at once this spring and has become one of the most valuable sources of product feedback we have.
• Creative Solutions in Healthcare. The largest and fastest rollout in exacare ai history: 160 facilities and more than 3,000 users live within 48 hours, just eight weeks after signing, with no pilot.

Engagement Awards

Engagement is a simple category to explain, but maybe the hardest one to fake. It's about who actually uses exacare ai: how many people log in, how often they come back, and how much of the platform they use. These organizations don't treat exacare ai as another tool. It's where the work happens.

• United Hebrew. United Hebrew knew exactly what they wanted exacare ai to solve from the first evaluation call, centralized their entire admissions process around it, and now every active user is back every week.
• Hillcrest Health & Living. A packed go-live call in January, our Operations team calling them fans within the first week, and a leader who learned the platform well enough to guide every workflow change herself.
• Palladian Management. Palladian ran one of the most thorough evaluations we've seen, built their own business case, and a year in, nearly all of their active users still show up every week.
• Hill Valley Healthcare. No organization uses exacare ai more than Hill Valley, and their data-obsessed team lives in our reporting.
• HMG Healthcare. HMG rolled out its entire organization in a month, and leadership has been in the platform so consistently since that they once configured a new feature before we'd announced it.

Operators of the Year

This award covers a lot of what the other awards celebrate in one organization: innovation, execution, partnership, and measurable impact. We looked at speed, quality, and engagement, then asked our teams who they'd point to if someone asked what great looks like on exacare ai.

• The Springs at Monarch Landing. One building with a referral volume most multi-site operators would envy, and a share of referrals reviewed to a decision far above the single-site benchmark. They've made sure their parent organization knows it, taking reference calls with sister communities and presenting on exacare ai at an internal summit.
• NYE Health Services. If we drew up the dream operator on paper, it would look like NYE. They went live in January, were hitting both our speed and quality bars within months, and have a tenured leadership team that keeps pushing on innovation.
• Pearl Healthcare. One of the first operators to bet on exacare ai, with the results to show for it, including a major jump in census in their second quarter. Their leadership never wavers on putting the resident first, and they've pushed us to improve the product at every step.
• Journey Skilled Nursing. Journey doesn't just use exacare ai, they help build it. They've shaped major pieces of the platform, are first in line for our newest features, and have doubled in size, with every new acquisition live on exacare ai on day one. The results show up where it matters: central intake handling twice the referrals each day, occupancy up, census at all-time highs, and skilled mix doubled.
• The Alden Network. Alden answers referrals across its entire network in about the time it takes to get a coffee. They rolled exacare ai out in phases across their skilled nursing network, extended it to their home health company, and keep adding products to improve resident care, setting the bar for change management in a large organization.
• Carmelite System. Our Nonprofit Operator of the Year, an award for the nonprofits whose margins are thinner and whose mission is heavier. Melodi Pinz, Carmelite's business development leader, brought exacare ai with her from a previous employer and rolled it across one of the largest nonprofits on the platform, cutting referral response times from an hour, sometimes days, to minutes. Hospital case managers noticed and called to ask what they were doing differently, and she walked them through exacare ai.

The individual recipient awards

If you asked anyone at exacare ai to name standout customers, the ones listed below are some of the names you’d hear. They're admissions directors, intake leaders, business development executives, and frontline staff, and what they have in common is that they've all treated us like a partner rather than a vendor. The individual winners were nominated by the members of our team who work with them most closely, so every one of these came with a story attached.

exacare ai Champion of the Year

• Kadi Martin, Rocky Mountain Care. Kadi runs central intake for one of the few operators with a truly centralized model across skilled nursing, home health, and hospice, and she has treated exacare ai as a co-development partner rather than a vendor. She helped build our Home Health and Hospice intake products, tested a range of features with us, and joined our first-ever home health webinar.

Power Users of the Year

• William Nettles, Southern Admin. Known as "the exacare guy" at his company, William was asked by his COO to become the power user for his team, and he delivered. He started in his own building, then traveled to sites across the organization during rollout month to train teams himself. He gets in the weeds on every new feature and is one of the daily users our product team turns to before shipping UI changes.
• Tanya Carlson, Pearl Healthcare. A real O.G. who moved from a legacy platform to a more innovative one because she trusted what we could deliver, Tanya has shaped exacare ai from the start. Her detailed early feedback drove improvements to the admission screener, and she doesn't just use the platform, she builds power users around her.

Frontline Impact Award

• Felicia Legier, Vered. Felicia is in exacare ai every day, and her team and residents see the impact. She became the resident expert, coaches colleagues on best practices, and sends us feedback whenever something could work better. She’s been a supporter since day one and has taken more reference calls for us than we can count.

Community Builder Award

• Rick Oros, Lifespace. Rick has been a voice in our community since the very beginning, back when we were still getting the exacare ai name out there, and he brings a nonprofit operator's perspective we're lucky to have. He saw the value early, is always willing to take a reference call, and helps his team understand not just how to use exacare ai but why it matters. We also hear he once showed up to a go-live in an elf costume. That's community.

Quality of Care Champion

• Kristi Tavarez, Sweetwater Care. Kristi measures everything and uses it to make care better. She reviews response times with every regional director every Monday, so no region can hide in the averages. When she found that some regions were answering only a fraction of their referrals, she retrained her liaisons to acknowledge every one. She uses exacare ai to help her understand each patient, so she can walk into a room already knowing how to talk about their care.

Partnership Awards

• Nicolle Meade, Exceptional Living Centers. Nicolle is the executive sponsor behind one of our strongest customer case studies and one of our most important pilots. She’s been a strong thought partner on how centralized admissions teams actually work, and she helped us understand which KPIs our Data Center needed to show. She bought into the product early and has been a delight to work with since day one.
• Tina DeFrancesco, National Health Care Associates. Tina has been in the room for every step of NHCA's journey and has championed exacare ai since the beginning. She's one of our go-to references in the Northeast, shares her feedback without hesitation, and handles the tough conversations that come with any big change with grace.
• Ross Wells, Clear Choice. Ross treats every product update as a conversation, not a release note. He knows the platform like a member of our team, checks in constantly on feature development, and sends some of the most helpful feedback we get. Many of the features users love today have his input, and he's been in it with us through thick and thin.

Advocate Award

• Corie Sass, Vetter. Corie advocates for exacare ai where it matters most: with the hospitals and health systems upstream of every referral. She’s laid down the law and has reached out to hospital contacts on our behalf, and has been willing to have the tough conversations and work through the challenges with us. She’s also been one of our strongest customer references for well over a year.
• Bill Chase, Monarch Healthcare. Bill advocates for exacare ai inside his organization and well beyond it. He brought a major health system to the table to sort out hospital access, and has put Monarch behind pilot after pilot. His team has seen referral acceptance go up and review time come way down, and he's been willing to share that story.

Thank you

The awards ceremony was one night, but the work that earned the awards happens every day. To everyone we honored: thank you for making exacare ai better at every turn. We’re just getting started!

We'll be back at it next year. Before then, we hope to see you at the exacare ai Summit in 2027.