Field observations brief · The BCBA Business Curriculum Initiative
New ABA practice formation, first-year survivability, and a question about training.
ABA Impact has tracked new ABA practice formation continuously since October 2023 by monitoring monthly NPI registrations under ABA-classified taxonomy codes. Across 35 months of tracking, 9,742 new practices have been registered nationally — a monthly average of 278. In parallel, we have conducted direct follow-up outreach to a sample of these new practices at 6 and 12 months post-registration. Within that sample, approximately 10% have closed before completing year one. This brief presents the tracking data, the observed survivability pattern, and the question it raises about how the BCBA credentialing path prepares practitioners for the operational realities of the field many of them enter.
- 9,742
- New ABA practices registered nationally, Oct 2023 – Sep 2026. Source: NPI Registry monitoring, updated monthly.
- ~10%
- First-year closure rate observed through direct follow-up outreach at registration, 6 and 12 months. See Section 6.
- ~970
- Estimated first-year closures, applying the observed 10% rate to cumulative registrations. Each closure sends a caseload of children back to existing waitlists.
Data current as of October 17, 2026. Methodology and limitations are in Section 6; the tracking data is in Section 2 and available as a data file.
Section 01 · Descriptive observations
What we observe in the field.
Across the practitioners we engage with through ABA Impact's community and direct outreach, the move from clinical employment into practice ownership often occurs within the first several years post-credential. We do not currently have a representative national estimate of this transition rate, and we make no claim to one. What we can report is that, in our tracked cohort, ownership or co-ownership is common enough to constitute a meaningful operational reality for the credentialing path — not an outlier outcome.
The BACB Verified Course Sequence does not include content areas addressing practice operation, payer relationships, or business formation. The competency areas, the supervised fieldwork, and the examination are structured around clinical practice — they are not structured to prepare a practitioner to operate a practice. This is not a criticism of the VCS as a clinical credentialing instrument. It is an observation about the scope of what the credential is currently designed to certify.
In our follow-up outreach to closed practices, the failure modes we hear about cluster around operational rather than clinical concerns: missed billing windows, payer credentialing problems, hiring done without adequate legal scaffolding, and cash-flow disruptions that arrive before clinical workflows have stabilized. We do not claim these are the sole or even the predominant causes of first-year closure across the field. We report them because they recur across our outreach with notable consistency, and because they share a common feature: none of them are addressed in the path that produced the practitioners experiencing them.
"I knew how to write a behavior plan. Nobody taught me how to read an EOB, hire a staff member legally, or understand why my Medicaid claims were getting denied. I closed in eleven months."
Section 02 · The data
How many BCBAs are starting businesses?
ABA Impact tracks new ABA practice formation by monitoring monthly NPI (National Provider Identifier) registrations under ABA-classified or ABA-adjacent taxonomy codes. The figures below reflect 35 months of continuous tracking through September 2026. Across that window, 9,742 new ABA practices have been registered nationally — an average of 278 per month. Numbers in this section update monthly as new NPI data is released.
- 240
- New ABA practices registered in September 2026.
- 278
- Monthly average across 35 months of tracking.
- 9,742
- Total new practices registered since Oct 2023.
Each registration represents a new ABA-providing organization. Our CRM captures the name and contact information of the individual who registered each NPI, which allows us to verify clinician versus non-clinician founder status through direct outreach. We have not yet completed that verification across the full tracking cohort — founder credentialing is not always identifiable from registration data alone and requires individual contact to confirm. Based on the practices we have verified to date, the majority are clinician-led, typically by a BCBA within several years of credentialing. A formal analysis of founder profile across the cohort is in development; verification on individual registrations is available on request.
Applying the observed ~10% closure rate to the 9,742 cumulative registrations yields an estimated ~970 first-year closures across this cohort. This is a projection based on a sampled closure rate applied to the full registration count, not a directly observed total.
Methodology: New ABA practice formation is identified by monitoring monthly NPI registrations under taxonomy code 103K00000X (Behavior Analyst) and adjacent codes used by ABA-providing organizations. Closure estimates are based on direct phone outreach to new practice owners at registration and re-contact at six and twelve months. Closure data is qualitative and observational, not census-level. Last updated: October 17, 2026. Full code list and inclusion criteria available on request.
Sub-section B
What does the credentialing framework currently require?
Detailed content-area analysis in progress. ABA Impact is completing a structured review of the BACB 5th Edition Task List and the 6th Edition Test Content Outline (effective January 2025) for business-operations content coverage. The full analysis, with a content-area-by-content-area coverage assessment and direct citations to BACB published documents, will be published here when complete.
Within the published content areas of the BACB 5th Edition Task List and the 6th Edition Test Content Outline, we do not identify required material covering financial operations, payer relationships, hiring and labor practices, or organizational management. Individual university programs may include such material at their discretion within elective coursework; this material is not addressed by the BACB framework itself.
The BACB has announced revisions to the coursework standards taking effect January 1, 2027. The forthcoming revision is the natural moment to consider whether the credentialing framework should reflect the operational realities that a meaningful share of practitioners will encounter post-credential.
- Behavior Analyst Certification Board. BCBA Task List (5th ed.). bacb.com.
- Behavior Analyst Certification Board. BCBA Test Content Outline (6th ed.), effective January 1, 2025. bacb.com.
- Behavior Analyst Certification Board. Announcement of revised coursework standards effective January 1, 2027. bacb.com.
Sub-section C
Should business content be part of BCBA training? What practitioners say.
In May 2026, ABA Impact ran an informal community poll asking members of the ABA Business Challenges Facebook community whether business coursework should be part of the BCBA training path. Results reflect n=115 responses. The sample is self-selected and the population — members of a community focused on ABA business operations — is non-representative of all BCBAs nationally. Read these findings as community sentiment, not a national survey.
- Yes — required coursework, same as clinical content6%
- Yes — but as elective or optional track, not required62%
- No — but offered separately after credentialing12%
- No — business training isn't the school's job20%
Sixty-eight percent of respondents support some form of business coursework in the BCBA training path, with the dominant view favoring elective rather than required inclusion — by roughly 10 to 1. A meaningful minority of 32% does not support inclusion in the credentialing path, with 20% holding that business training is outside the scope of a behavior analysis degree. The field is not aligned around excluding business content, but it is not aligned around mandating it either. A flexible delivery model — coursework available within the credentialing path but not universally required — better reflects current sentiment than either the status quo or mandatory inclusion.
Selected respondent comments will be published here, anonymized and verbatim, following respondent consent.
Section 03 · Disclosure & context
Who we are and how we know what we know.
ABA Impact is a professional community and education organization serving Applied Behavior Analysis practitioners. The community comprises 13,000+ members who are predominantly founders, owner-operators, and clinical leaders of ABA-providing organizations. The initiative documented in this brief is informed by direct, ongoing contact with this population — including new practice owners contacted at NPI registration and re-contacted at six and twelve months.
Initiative leadership. This initiative is led by Derreck Ogden, Founder & CEO, ABA Impact, with operational support from Joshua Nelson, Community Administrator & CXO. Editorial responsibility rests with ABA Impact. Methodology questions and requests for individual registration verification: hello@abaimpact.com.
Relevant disclosures. ABA Impact operates the eBCBA™ programs, including paid business-operations training for current ABA practitioners. We disclose this for two reasons. First, it is a financial relationship between ABA Impact and the population this brief studies. Second, the program's reach — direct contact with new owners through community membership and enrollment — is the mechanism through which the field-observation data in this brief is generated. The program does not change what we observe; it is the infrastructure through which we observe it.
This initiative is not funded by, and does not solicit input from, the Behavior Analyst Certification Board or any university accreditation body. ABA Impact is funded through program tuition and category-exclusive vendor sponsorships from organizations serving the ABA industry.
The purpose of this brief is to inform how the BCBA credentialing framework prepares practitioners for the operational realities of the field they enter. It is not a sales channel for any ABA Impact program. The point is that this education should exist inside the credentialing path, regardless of who provides it.
Section 04 · Proposal
What should the credentialing framework change?
The following proposal reflects what the field-observation data and community survey results, taken together, appear to support. It rests on two principles. First, the credentialing framework should acknowledge that practice ownership is a common post-credential outcome and prepare for it. Second, the path to that preparation should be flexible — the survey data does not support universal mandatory inclusion, and individual programs are better positioned than the framework itself to determine instructional design. The proposal is offered as input to the BACB's announced revision of coursework standards taking effect January 2027, and to university program faculty considering elective content.
- 01
Recognition of practice ownership as a credentialed outcome
The credentialing framework should formally acknowledge that a meaningful share of BCBAs will operate practices within the first several years post-credential. This acknowledgment alone does not require coursework changes — it is the conceptual foundation that justifies the subsequent items.
- 02
Business operations content made available within the credentialing path
Make business operations content available through the credentialing path — as elective coursework, as integrated material within existing content areas, or as a permitted concentration. The community survey data supports availability rather than universal mandate: 62% of responding practitioners favored elective inclusion, compared with 6% favoring required inclusion. Programs and candidates should retain discretion over whether and how the content is included.
- 03
Minimum competency areas, if business content is included
Where programs choose to include business operations content, the following competency areas reflect the failure modes observed in our first-year closure outreach: financial literacy for owner-operators, payer and reimbursement structures, regulatory and compliance foundations, hiring and labor basics, and operational risk management. Programs may cover these in any depth they determine appropriate. Our field experience suggests a four-to-six hour foundational module is sufficient to address the most common operational failure modes; deeper coverage is welcome but not required by this proposal.
- 04
Mentorship and field-partnership infrastructure
Where coursework is not the appropriate vehicle, formal mentorship pipelines and partnerships with established practices may serve the same preparatory function. Some practitioners and program faculty have suggested that the operational gap is better addressed through structured fieldwork or post-credential mentorship than through additional coursework. This proposal recognizes both pathways as legitimate and welcomes program-level innovation in how the gap is closed.
- 05
An evidence-collection partnership
ABA Impact contributes ongoing field data — NPI registration tracking, first-year closure outreach, and community survey results — to support continued review of curricular outcomes. We are willing to make this data available to academic partners, accreditation bodies, and BACB working groups under reasonable terms. Methodology documentation is published in Section 6.
This proposal is offered as input, not as advocacy for any specific implementation. Comments, corrections, and counterproposals are invited at hello@abaimpact.com.
Section 05 · Engage
For academic partners and field reviewers.
This initiative is most useful when it is reviewed, challenged, and refined by the people closest to the credentialing path — program faculty, accreditation reviewers, BACB working group participants, and practitioners who have lived the operational realities this brief documents. This form is for engagement, not enrollment in anything. We respond within one business day, and methodology critiques and counterproposals are prioritized.
Section 06 · Methodology
Methodology, sources, and limitations.
This section documents the data sources, collection methods, sample definitions, and acknowledged limitations behind the figures in this brief, so an external reviewer can evaluate, critique, and replicate the work where possible.
6.1 NPI Registry tracking
ABA Impact monitors monthly NPI registrations to identify new ABA-providing organizations. The NPI Registry is maintained by the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services and is publicly accessible at npiregistry.cms.hhs.gov. Tracking covers taxonomy code 103K00000X (Behavior Analyst) and adjacent codes used by organizations providing ABA services. Monthly counts are recorded from NPI release data. Reported figures reflect registrations as published — including occasional retrospective batches in which NPI consolidates multiple months into a single release (most notably the May 2024 release, which included April–May registrations). The June 2026 figure also reflects an unusually large release, confirmed with our data source.
Updates: New tracking data is added monthly. Data on this page is current as of October 17, 2026. The monthly series is published as a JSON data file.
Limitations: NPI registration captures the organization, not the credentials of the individual who registered it. Whether a registrant is a BCBA, a non-clinician founder, or an investor-led entity cannot be determined from NPI data alone (see 6.2).
6.2 Founder verification (in progress)
ABA Impact's CRM captures the name and contact information of the individual who registered each NPI we track, which allows us to verify clinician versus non-clinician founder status through direct outreach (see 6.3). Verification has not been completed across the full cohort; founder credentialing is not always identifiable from registration data and requires individual contact to confirm. A formal analysis of founder profile is in development and will be published here when complete. Verification on individual registrations is available on request.
6.3 First-year closure outreach
ABA Impact contacts new ABA practice owners at NPI registration and re-contacts them at six and twelve months to determine operational status, by phone, supplemented with email and email-verification checks where phone contact is not successful. A practice is recorded as closed when one of the following is verified: confirmed dissolution of the business entity, confirmed closure of the LLC, or sustained inability to reach the practice through any channel combined with confirmation that it is no longer operating (public records, insurance directories, or community reports).
The ~10% first-year closure rate reflects the rate observed within the sub-set of the cohort we have successfully reached for follow-up. Sample size for the closure outreach is approximate and is being documented as the cohort matures.
Limitations: This is qualitative, observational data, not a census. Practices we cannot reach are recorded as unverified, not as closed or operating, and the closure rate is calculated against the verified portion of the sample. Non-response bias is possible: closed practices may be systematically harder to reach, which could mean the true closure rate is higher, not lower. Read the 10% figure as a lower-bound estimate within the cohort, not a population-level closure rate.
6.4 Community survey data
The survey in Section 2 (Sub-section C) was a Facebook poll in the ABA Business Challenges community in May 2026. The community has 13,000+ members, approximately 50% identifying as owners or decision-makers. The poll was open to all members; n=115 responses were recorded. The question: "Should business coursework be required as part of BCBA training?" with the four response options shown in Figure 3.
Limitations: The sample is self-selected and non-representative of all BCBAs nationally. Facebook lets respondents add options after a poll is published; one such option was added during the response window, received 0% of votes, and is excluded because it was not part of the original instrument. Margin of error on n=115 is approximately ±9 percentage points at 95% confidence; interpret comparisons between adjacent options with that in mind.
6.5 VCS framework analysis (in progress)
ABA Impact is completing a structured review of the BACB 5th Edition Task List and the 6th Edition Test Content Outline (effective January 2025) for business-operations coverage, documenting content area by content area what each framework addresses or omits, with direct citations. Until it is published, statements in Sub-section B are limited to the general observation that the BACB framework does not include required content areas covering financial operations, payer relationships, or organizational management. All BACB documents are publicly available at bacb.com.
6.6 General limitations
- Generalizability. The data reflects the population ABA Impact has direct contact with — predominantly U.S.-based ABA-providing organizations serving Medicaid and commercial insurance markets. Findings may not generalize beyond these conditions.
- Self-selection. Both the community population and the outreach respondent pool are self-selected, not a random sample of the field. This is documented rather than corrected; correction would require resources and access we do not currently have.
- Causation vs. observation. Failure modes are described, not proven. The brief documents what closing practitioners tell us — not what objectively caused their closure.
ABA Impact welcomes critique and correction from academic reviewers, program faculty, and BACB working group participants: hello@abaimpact.com. This brief is a living document.
Revision history
- October 18, 2026 — Brief moved to abaimpact.com/study. Added June–September 2026 NPI data (June reflects an unusually large release, confirmed with our data source). Figures now read directly from the published tracking data file.
- May 27, 2026 — Brief published. Sections 1–6 live; Sub-section B (VCS analysis) published as work in progress; founder verification analysis in development.