Growing your practice
Where ABA families come from, and how to win more of them.
How to grow an ABA practice: five channels, and the one thing they all depend on.
The five channels that bring families to an ABA practice — Google Ads, Meta, SEO, physician referrals, and the families you already have — what each one is good at, where each one leaks, and the operational work that decides whether any of it converts.
Google Ads for ABA: everyone bids on the same parent. The winner answers first.
Campaign structure, negative keywords, landing pages and call tracking for ABA practices on Google Ads — plus the response discipline that decides which of the five providers that parent contacted actually gets the child.
Meta ads for ABA: buying attention the family never went looking for.
How ABA practices use Meta ads to reach parents before they ever search — what to run, why lead quality looks worse than it is, and the five-minute follow-up discipline that decides whether any of it converts.
SEO for ABA practices — and what changes when parents ask an AI instead.
The pages that actually rank for ABA searches, why Google Business Profile outranks your website for "near me," and how to be the practice an AI assistant names when a parent asks who takes their plan.
How to get pediatricians to refer to your ABA practice — and keep referring.
Referred families are pre-qualified, usually diagnosed, and free. Here is who to approach, what to say, what to leave behind, and the follow-through loop that decides whether a first referral becomes a steady stream.
Who should answer your ABA intake line: a coordinator, a BCBA, or the owner?
Speed is table stakes in ABA intake, but trust is what wins the family. Who should take the first call (an intake coordinator, a BCBA, the owner or an answering service), what each one is good at, and how the fastest-growing practices split the job so every family is answered instantly and talks to a clinician early.
How AI can help an ABA practice grow, and where it shouldn’t be used.
A practical guide to AI in ABA practices: AI receptionists and intake, insurance verification, document collection, follow-up, marketing and admin, plus the clinical decisions AI should stay out of, and the HIPAA guardrails every tool must meet.
Intake and operations
Getting a family from first contact to first session.
The ABA client intake process, step by step.
The complete ABA intake process — from first contact to first session — with benchmarks, a full document library with state-by-state requirements, and templated rules for when to ask for each document.
ABA intake drop-off: why families disappear, and the fix.
ABA providers lose 40–85% of families between first inquiry and first session. Where the drop-off happens, why, and the playbook for fixing each leak.
ABA intake forms: what to include (+ free template).
Everything an ABA intake packet should cover — client and caregiver details, insurance, clinical history, availability, and consents — plus a free printable template.
ABA follow-up that does not read like a robot wrote it.
Why "Thank you for your inquiry, someone will be in touch" loses families, what a follow-up that earns a reply actually contains, and the cadence, channels and guardrails behind a sequence that works.
Half the families who contact you are not doing it during business hours.
In a cohort of 120 providers and 185,000 family conversations, 48% of contacts arrived outside business hours. What parents do when they reach voicemail, the real options for covering those hours, and what coverage has to do beyond taking a message.
ABA waitlist management: keep families engaged, not waiting.
How ABA providers keep waitlisted families engaged, verified, and ready to start — instead of losing them to the first competitor with an opening. Free checklist included.
The eight numbers that explain why your ABA practice is not growing.
Speed to first contact, answer rate, qualified rate, packet completion, verification turnaround, inquiry-to-start and cost per started client — what to measure in an ABA practice, where each number hides, and how to review it weekly.
Best ABA intake software in 2026: how to choose, and what to test before you buy.
The four kinds of tools ABA practices use for intake (practice-management intake modules, general CRMs, answering services and AI intake platforms), what each is good at, the twelve questions to ask any vendor, and a two-week test that shows whether a tool actually moves families to first session.
Payers, billing and records
Coverage rules, codes and the documents an authorization needs.
ABA CPT codes 97151–97158 explained: who bills each one, and what Medicaid pays.
Every ABA billing code in plain language: 97151, 97152, 97153, 97154, 97155, 97156, 97157, 97158, 0362T and 0373T. Who can render each, how 15-minute units work, daily unit limits, concurrent billing, credential modifiers, and current Medicaid rates for 97153 and 97155 in 15 states.
Records requests that actually come back: releases, recipients, and the details that decide.
Why diagnostic reports stall an ABA start, what makes a release valid under HIPAA, when one general ROI can cover a class of recipients, and the details that get a request fulfilled on the first attempt.
The family has no diagnosis yet. That is the beginning of the conversation, not the end.
Families who reach out before a diagnosis are the largest segment most ABA practices throw away. How to check your own payer rules, build an evaluation path, and own the months of waiting so the family starts with you.
The ABA payer directory
Coverage, prior-auth and diagnosis rules for 260+ Medicaid and commercial plans across 26 states, with sources.
Research and free tools
Our own data, and tools you can use today.
The Intake Gap
185,054 family conversations across 120 ABA providers: when families reach out, what they ask, and where they are lost.
Intake leak calculator
What the families you lose between inquiry and first session are worth per year.
Pediatric referral contacts
150,325 pediatricians and child-development professionals across all 50 states, free to download.