Sunday Recap from NHIA 2025
NHIA 2025 convened the largest gathering dedicated to the home and alternate site infusion industry in Washington, D.C., featuring the event’s most extensive Expo ever with 150 product and service suppliers supporting the industry, including 39 first-time exhibitors. The conference continued to see an increase in individuals investing to attend the conference and nearly 1,600 industry professionals attended the 5-day event.
Industry Trends and Initiatives
At Sunday morning’s Executive Preconference, NHIA President and CEO Connie Sullivan set the tone for the event, sharing trendlines and insights on the future of the infusion market and NHIA’s key initiatives. An analysis of claims data shows areas of growth, such as immune globulins—the fastest growing category in home infusion therapy—as well as areas for future advocacy efforts. For example, the decreasing number of providers working in parenteral nutrition (PN) (16% per year) and increasing cost of preparing the formula (200% over the past 8 years) are the basis for the association’s commercial payor outreach and exploration of value-based care models.
In addition, Medicare Advantage (MA) plans, a growing segment of the payor mix for anti-infectives (14.5% in 2022 compared to 19% in 2024) underscores the need for revamped home infusion coverage as outlined in the newly reintroduced Preserving Patient Access to Home Infusion Act. Modeled after the commercial sector S-codes, the legislation would bundle supplies and services, which creates a billable daily service, and make anti-infectives eligible for coverage whether they are in Part B or D. This would provide HIT services access to roughly an additional one million Medicare beneficiaries. The legislation would also ensure a 5-year transition that freezes the payment rate for nursing days at the current rate so payments can’t be eroded by a rate reduction and opens the door to adding more drugs under the benefit.
NHIA is working with new data partners to update its popular trends report which will provide a clearer understanding of how the industry has evolved since the pandemic. We look forward to publishing an updated report later this year.
Larger trends impacting health care covered in the Executive Preconference include: rising mergers and acquisition activity, uncertainty in health policy, such as drug pricing reforms, China’s innovation surge with one-third of global licensing deals, AI revolutions, and the growth of promising new therapies. It also featured hot topics including:
- Advances in cell and gene precision medicine
- An update on compounding policy
- What lies ahead with the Inflation Reduction Act, PBM reform, tariffs, and more
Expanding the Window of Possibility
After taking stock of the opportunities and challenges, attendees were encouraged to uncover the creative gifts they had as kids and embrace crazy ideas. “Your entire industry was once a crazy idea, but now it makes so much sense to us,” observed keynote speaker Kyle Scheele. “Crazy ideas are the key to expanding your window of possibility.”
Ideas need certain things in order to thrive. First, they need a chance. “If you want conventional results, conventional ideas will get you there. If you want crazy results, you have to embrace crazy ideas,” said Scheele. Crazy ideas also need a home. It’s important to lock down fleeting ideas, according to Scheele. “That means your team needs to know what keeps you up at night, and if they have an idea about how to solve it, where they can put that idea.”
In order to grow, crazy ideas need a time and place—so “they can get out of your head and into the world,” says Scheele—as well as a bodyguard. The bodyguard fends off scoffing and negativity until the idea get legs. “You want the devil’s advocate to test an idea when you’re ready to strengthen it, but you don’t need that guy around at the beginning,” he advises.
And finally, crazy ideas need a crew. “Ideas are a team sport—they aren’t just for you,” concludes Scheele. “They need collaboration to make them come alive,” he noted, reminding attendees that conferences like NHIA 2025 are the ideal venue for sharing knowledge and experiences while learning from one another. Taking the time and investing in the knowledge sharing and community at an industry event like NHIA 2025 underscores an essential value, as Scheele notes, “we need to be people that are biased toward action.”
NHIA Expo
NHIA hosted its largest Expo ever, featuring 150 product and service suppliers supporting the industry, including dozens of first-time exhibitors and kicked it off with a buzzing and energetic Grand Opening Reception filled with valuable conversations and great food and drinks. The all-new Infusion Suite Experience was exceedingly popular and took attendees through 6 stations in a mock infusion suite to identify deficiencies and educate on the proper standards references for each.
Other Highlights
Additional education featuring on Sunday included the Sterile Compounding Preconference, Lunch & Learn sessions covering New Drugs and Biologics and Balancing Safe Medication Practices with Unpredictable Medical Supplies, as well as a block of sessions ranging from Medicare audits to building a team hybrid work environment to managing acute kidney injury in diabetes patients receiving vancomycin.
While live polling and interactive features are spread throughout the education program, one attendee favorite from Sunday, was the highly engaging “What is Pharmacy Jeopardy” session, which made exploring sterile compounding regulatory compliance into the most exciting conversation at the conference.
Thank you to our supporters:
Pharmacy Stars for their support of the Sterile Compounding Preconference
Brightree for their support of the Opening General Session
Integrated Medical Systems, Inc. (IMS) for their support of the Expo Grand Opening Reception
Protara Therapeutics for the support of the Welcome Reception on Saturday
