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| Private Equity is Corrupting Applied Behavior Analysis (ABA): What You Can Do to Protect Your Clients, Yourself, and Your Profession |
| Sunday, January 19, 2025 |
| 8:10 AM–9:00 AM |
| Sheraton New Orleans, Level 3, Napoleon Ballroom BC |
| Area: AUT; Domain: Service Delivery |
| Chair: Terry S. Falcomata (The University of Texas at Austin) |
| CE Instructor: Terry S. Falcomata, Ph.D. |
| Presenting Author: JON S. BAILEY (Florida State University, Ret.) |
| Abstract: All 51 states passed laws requiring insurance companies and state employee benefit plans to pay for applied behavior analysis (ABA) services; by 2019 this meant that over 200 million people were covered providing a huge new market for Board Certified Behavior Analysts (BCBAs) and Registered Behavior Technicians (RBTs) that greatly exceeded the supply that was available. Private equity firms discovered this “cash cow” just sitting there and began investing as early as 2010 and by 2022 they constituted approximately 90% of all merger and acquisition deals in this new sector. The net result of this new gold rush involving millions and millions of dollars was that newly minted behavior analysts with very little experience were presented with six-figure offers with little understanding of what they were getting into; these companies are primarily involved in pressuring them to pull in more and more clients with increasing dosages (billable hours) of treatment. Many BCBAs have become fiscal pawns in a profit-driven game of grab-the-money-and-run. In this paper I will describe in detail the downside of this rapidly evolving practice by private-equity-owned ABA companies and offer suggestions on how behavior analysts can reestablish their role as guardians of honest, ethical, and effective treatment. |
| Instruction Level: Intermediate |
| Target Audience: Masters and Doctoral Behavior Analysts Concerned with Service Delivery to ASD Children |
| Learning Objectives: At the conclusion of the presentation, participants will be able to: (1) describe the three strategies that private-equity owned companies use to increase their profits; (2) describe three ways that they can push back against these contingencies; (3) describe red flags indicating that the profit motive is at work in the decision making process with the company. |
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| JON S. BAILEY (Florida State University, Ret.) |
 "Dr. Bailey received his BS and MS from Arizona State University where he worked with Jack Michael and Lee Meyerson, and his PhD, from the University of Kansas in 1970, with Mont Wolf as his mentor; he is a newly retired Professor Emeritus of Psychology from Florida State University where he was on the graduate faculty for 38 years and produced a record 63 PhDs. He was on the faculty of the FSU Panama City for nearly 25 years and created their ABA Master’s Program which has been ranked #1 in the world by the BACB three times in the last 10 years; approximately 350 students have graduated from the program. He is a BCBA-D, a Fellow of the Association for Behavior Analysis: International, and the American Psychological Association. Jon received the Distinguished Service to Behavior Analysis Award from the Society for the Advancement of Behavior Analysis, the Division 25 Fred S. Keller Behavioral Education Award and the University of Kansas Applied Behavioral Science Distinguished Alumni Award as well as the prestigious Nathan H. Azrin Award for Outstanding Contributions to Applied Behavior Analysis from the American Psychological Association. In 2017, he received the Murray Sidman Award for Enduring Contributions to Behavior Analysis from the Berkshire Association for Behavior Analysis and Therapy. He is credited with founding the Florida Association for Behavior Analysis which now has nearly 2,000 members and Behavior Management Consultants, a thriving consulting company, both in 1980. He has published over 100 peer-reviewed research articles, is past Chief Editor of the Journal of Applied Behavior Analysis and is the co-author of 14 books including Ethics for Behavior Analysts, 4th edition, Research Methods in Applied Behavior Analysis, 2nd Edition, the 2nd edition of How to Think Like a... Behavior Analyst and 25 Essential Skills for Professional Behavior Analysts, 2nd edition. His latest endeavor is the creation of the popular ABAEthicsHotline.com which receives hundreds of ethics questions per month from consumers and behavior analysts all over the world. " |
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