For many ABA practices, growth is the goal. Expanding your reach means supporting more families, hiring more clinicians, and increasing your impact in the community. It’s an exciting time that validates the hard work your team puts in every single day.
With that growth comes added complexity. As you add clients, clinicians, and locations, the operational side of the practice has to keep pace. Billing is often the first area where this shift becomes noticeable.
Seeing changes in your billing process doesn’t mean something is wrong. More often, it’s a natural indicator that your practice is evolving. Recognizing these signs early can help you adapt before friction starts to slow momentum.
1. Manual Checks and Follow-Ups Start to Add Up
One of the earliest signs is when your team is spending more time double-checking tasks or information for accuracy. Tasks that once felt quick and manageable begin to take more time as volume grows.
When scheduling and billing tools don’t speak the same language, teams spend valuable time confirming that information matches across platforms. Staff may cross-reference session notes with appointment times or manually calculate units to ensure accuracy.
Over time, these small checks add up, pulling attention away from other important work. As practices grow, many teams begin exploring more connected, AI-informed workflows that can automatically flag discrepancies or surface missing details before they require manual review.
2. Questions Interrupt the Day More Frequently
Another common sign is the rise of “quick questions.” Billing-related questions begin surfacing more frequently across team chats, emails, or hallway conversations.
At first, these interruptions seem harmless. But as volume grows, the time spent tracking down answers accumulates. Team members pause their work to clarify details or confirm next steps. As context switching increases, the day can feel busier without a corresponding increase in progress.
3. Visibility Is Harder to Maintain
As practices grow, maintaining a clear view into billing activity becomes more challenging when workflows remain manual or disconnected.
For example, finding out where a claim stands may mean relying on updates from others or logging into multiple systems to piece together information. When getting a clear answer requires extra coordination, visibility starts to slip – and billing becomes more reactive than planned. Connected platforms with built-in intelligence can help surface claim status and potential issues earlier, reducing the need for constant follow-up.
4. Payments Take Longer to Move Through the System
As your practice grows, your billing workflow should evolve with it - supporting your team, not slowing them down.
These Signals Reflect Growth, Not Failure
These signs do not mean your billing department is broken or that your team is failing. They indicate that your current workflows are carrying a heavier load than they were designed to handle.
This is a pivotal moment. It is the point where teams realize that processes need to evolve to remain efficient. Recognizing these signs early creates an opportunity to adapt in a way that benefits operational efficiency and improves care delivery.
Step Back to See the Patterns
In the day-to-day rush of running a practice, these signs can feel like isolated events. However, when you step back, a clear pattern often emerges.
Taking time to reflect – and listen to where your teams feel the most friction – can bring clarity. What looks like individual billing challenges is often a sign that workflows need to better support how care is being delivered today.
Many practices find that as billing workflows evolve – often incorporating more connected, AI-informed tools – day-to-day work starts to feel steadier. Visibility improves, interruptions decrease, and teams spend less time coordinating billing details.
This infographic highlights five changes teams often notice when billing becomes part of care, offering a clearer view of how these shifts show up as practices grow.
