How Tribute Is Building AI In-House and Saving 300+ Hours a Month (Andrew Dobson)

Tribute Home Care has no engineers, so Andrew Dobson stepped up and is helping build AI tools in-house that collectively save 300+ hours per month. He explains how a scheduling dashboard evolved into an availability analyzer that helps staff new cases faster at 90–95% caregiver utilization. Tribute also used a Viv-built voice agent to fill 75% of its open weekend visits in an early test. Andrew shares how they condensed a five-system lead process into one workflow and reduced two days of financial reporting to a button press. He offers practical advice for finding the right AI projects, developing an internal champion, validating outputs, and keeping humans involved wherever judgment and relationships matter.

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min

Sep 8, 2026

How Tribute Is Building AI In-House and Saving 300+ Hours a Month (Andrew Dobson)

Miriam Allred (00:01)
Hey everyone, welcome to the Home Care Strategy Lab. I'm your host, Miriam Alred. It's great to be back with you this week. Today in the lab, I am joined by Andrew Dobson, the Director of Technology Innovation at Tribute Home Care, based in Massachusetts. Andrew, welcome to the show. It's great to be with you. How

Andrew (00:16)
Hi Miriam. Great to be here. Great to be with you.

Miriam Allred (00:20)
How are you doing? How are you feeling today and this week?

Andrew (00:23)
I'm doing great. It's a nice labor day, a little three day weekend, so happy about that and just happy to be here with you today.

Miriam Allred (00:30)
Yeah, likewise. Your first podcast recording, but you're no stranger to the show. You're a I I don't know, avid listener or an a c

Andrew (00:37)
Yes. I am an avid listener, yes, I've heard you quite a lot over the years, so it's exciting to be here.

Miriam Allred (00:39)
Yeah, so excited to excited to put you in the hot seat. yeah, just a little bit of context for people listening. I'm gonna be interviewing and kind of co-presenting with Andrew at the HCAOA in a few weeks. And so we've been talking about the concepts and putting together the decks and kind of working through our flows. And you've shared a lot of really great things with me. And I was like, I think I wanna interview you you on the show because there's a lot of people that listen that are probably not gonna be at HCAOA and they are gonna miss out because our session is going to be top tier.

but hopefully this will kind of make up some of the difference. So excited to jump in and talk about AI. I wanted to ask you right out of the gate, like are you tired of talking about AI and thinking about AI or no?

Andrew (01:20)
I feel like I don't talk about it enough to be honest with you. Like

Miriam Allred (01:23)
Really?

Andrew (01:24)
I I I work through it all day long and I build these projects and I've got all this fun and you know exciting information to show everybody about how they can make their jobs easier. And I just, you know, I love talking about it. I love showing people these tools, I love transforming their jobs and making things easier. So no, I'm not sick of it yet. We'll we'll see what happens though.

Miriam Allred (01:45)
Do you spend a lot of time online though? Do you feel like your social feed or your news feed, it's like all you ever see and hear about is AI or no?

Andrew (01:51)
yes. I mean, when I'm going through my reels on Instagram now, I feel like every time I'm clicking up it's another thing about Claude or, you know, somebody's story with AI or how AI is taking over the world or or whatever. Yeah, yeah.

Miriam Allred (02:03)
Okay, 'cause that's the fatigue I'm talking about. Like I just feel like it's all anyone is talking about online. And so I'm getting this like kinda like online AI fatigue. but like you, it's like, no, it's still exciting and interesting and I'm using it and wanna like get better at it, but just like online, I'm just like, Okay, let's talk about something else.

Andrew (02:20)
Well, I think you see it so much in business discussion nowadays. Every time you turn on the news, AI is taking over, it's taken this many jobs. And I think for so long we heard about it. You know, ChatGPT came out and there were, you know, opportunities for us to prompt and make our emails easier, but

I think, you know, earlier this year when Claude had come out and released some of their new features around building and, you know, vibe coding and all that, it just really changed the landscape for me personally and I know for a lot of other people to really start getting into it and using it to kind of, build tools to make life a little bit easier. So yeah, I'm still stuck on that momentum, but we'll we'll see what happens.

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Miriam Allred (02:59)
Yeah, do you feel like your journey though is parallel to a lot of people of like, Yeah, we were all talking about it and hearing about it like a couple of years ago and it's just gotten progressively better, but like a lot of acceleration the last like six months or twelve months, what would you say?

Andrew (03:12)
One hundred percent. our CEO has, you know, really been in it since the beginning, John Sneath, and we've been very lucky enough to have him kind of promote it and, give all of the office associates Chat GPT and Claude and everything like that for us to be able to discover it. So yeah, I think that things have blown up and it's been nice to be able to kind of experiment for as long as I have and finally be at that spot where it's like, okay, I feel comfortable with this now. I can start really, making those changes.

Miriam Allred (03:42)
But none of you are engineers. You're not an engineer background. John's not. Do you have any engineers at Tribute?

Andrew (03:44)
No.

Andrew (03:47)
We have none at all.

Miriam Allred (03:50)
Which is just like a healthy reminder of like what we're about to talk about and the expertise that you're gonna share is like you're not an engineer, neither is John neither is anybody. Most of you are like home care people.

Andrew (03:59)
We are home care people. I mean, I started working when I was twenty years old as a caregiver and here I am now. So

Miriam Allred (04:06)
Yeah. Tell us more about that. I I know I'm just jumping in right here, but yeah, introduce yourself a little bit more for the people that don't know you.

Andrew (04:15)
So you know, at 18 I wanted to work and go to school at the same time, and my friend was like, Hey, I'm working this job with adults with intellectual disabilities, and it's really fun, and we do all this cool stuff where we go out each day and take people out. And so he gave me the referral and I applied and got, you know, hired, and I did that for a few years through college, and it was eye-opening. Like I I you know, they talk a lot about, people with intellectual disabilities kind of like living in the shadows. You never really see

see that until you really step into it. And I really loved it. You know, building relationships and being around people. So that kind of, influenced me to get a degree in, psychology. And from there I worked in schools and was a director at a couple group homes.

And then became a stay-at-home dad for a few years where I almost got to be a caregiver for my own children. and then I found a job for Tribute Home Care as an after hours manager. And I was like, this is kind of interesting. I could potentially work at night and still be with my kids during the day. And so applied for at Tribute and did that for a couple of years actually. loved it. And then they had an opening for scheduling, so I was like, I might I might.

actually

doing scheduling and you know they they had a lot of flexibility for me at the time and you know just I've kind of worked myself up from there, became scheduling director of operations and then here I am now director of technology innovation so it's it's been a ride and I feel like having all of the

kind of understanding of what it's like to be on the ground up through operations has really kind of allowed me to be in this place where I understand, what it's like for everybody. And it's just not a lot of people get that experience. And I feel very grateful for it.

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