A national network of home-based care providers has built a business affiliate program designed to bolster its advocacy efforts.

Hearts for Home Care’s (H4HC) members engage in public advocacy and education as well as lobbying state governments and federal lawmakers. The organization’s new business affiliates will add their voices to those efforts. The inaugural class includes Axxess, Caribou, G-Group Marketing, Mission Care Collective, Nevvon, Pennsylvania Health Law Project (PHLP) and Polsinelli.

“We’re trying to engage all kinds of stakeholders in our mission. Right now, we’ve got over 12,000 consumer advocates,” H4HC President and Executive Director Dave Totaro told Home Health Care News’ sister publication, Hospice News. “These are either folks who are working for existing home care providers. They may be field nurses aides working in the offices. But we also wanted to reach out to the important business supply vendors who are so important to the industry in general. We limited it to a dozen by invitation only, and we got quite a strong reception.”

The affiliates will work with H4HC to drive strategic advocacy campaigns, shape public policy and advance thought leadership in the home-based care space with a shared mission of empowering caregivers, protecting patient choice and advancing the home care model, according to H4HC.

H4HC selected its business affiliates from among companies it has worked with before on other projects. The affiliates will join H4HC in visits to Capitol Hill, seats of state government and local congressional districts.

“We have seen and we have been able to justify that the more feet we put on the ground, the faster our voices are heard and the greater our return on our investment is,” Totaro said. “So we’re looking at them as expanding our reach.”

Issues that are currently top of mind for H4HC include forthcoming Medicaid cuts as a result of the Trump Administration’s “One Big Beautiful Bill,” as well as home health payment rate cuts. The organization is also advocating against state-based Medicaid payment rate cuts in places like Pennsylvania, North Carolina and other states.

“We hope that our affiliates, as well as our membership, will be involved and active in their local governments as well, because they probably will feel the effects there before even the cuts on the federal side,” Totaro said.