Data is crucial in shaping the strategies that define exceptional ABA therapy. Applied Behavior Analysis uses data-driven, evidence-based understanding of behavior to provide quality care – every data point represents the challenges and breakthroughs of a child and their family.
Data enhances the heart of ABA practices—caring for children. But it also helps you thrive as a business.
At the same time, an ABA practice is a business. Making better use of both operational and clinical data allows you to scale and streamline operations while enhancing the quality of care you provide.
From Data to Insights
The key to better outcomes is transforming data into insights.
Data and insights might sound like synonyms, but understanding the difference is essential to ABA practices. You can think of data as a collection of facts. Numbers, symbols or words—single points of information that can make it hard to see the bigger picture when you look at them one by one.
Data may be built into the concept of ABA, but insights take your data to the next level. They help you discover patterns so you can decide what to do with all the data you accumulate.
Insights reveal the actionable opportunities behind your data. They can be a powerful tool for improving both clinical and operational outcomes because they allow you to blend patient needs with efficiency. Using insights, ABA practices can elevate the effectiveness of their therapies and the smooth operation of their business – at the same time.
Insights in Practice
Converting your data into insights helps you do things you can’t easily do with individual pieces of data alone. Data visualization tools like reporting dashboards can make insights even easier to identify and use—they can help therapists spot developing concerns or opportunities for improvement.
So, what do insights look like in practice? Here are a couple of examples:
A Clinical Scenario: Skill Acquisition
When helping children develop essential skills such as communication, BCBAs begin by assessing the client’s current skillset and establishing baseline levels. From there, measurable goals and objectives are developed to help the child increase their skillset in that area. That all counts as data.
But data points are just one piece of the puzzle. Meaningful progress that’s observed in all areas of the child’s life is the main focus for everyone involved, and that progress can be further assisted when data is transformed into insights.
With insights, clinicians can identify how many skills a child is working on and how many opportunities they are getting each day to do that.
In the example of teaching communication skills, a BCBA might use insights to evaluate:
- if a child is making requests more independently
- if that independence is occurring across individuals and types of requests
- if teaching opportunities vary on certain days or with certain people
- if that communication skill is taking longer to make progress in comparison to others
When progress is slow, insights allow the BCBA to see a bigger picture in order to better pinpoint what areas could be addressed so that time and resources can be appropriately allocated.
Finally, insights help clinicians “zoom out” beyond the individual child to view progress and outcomes across multiple clients and clinicians at once. When you bring all that disparate data together as insights, you can also assess the effectiveness of different therapy programs or strategies and make critical adjustments to improve outcomes.
A Practice Management Scenario: Authorization and Utilization
On the practice management side of ABA, insights play just as essential a role by showing what your data means over time. You probably have plenty of everyday data that shows individual appointments and cancellations, or how many hours of therapy payors have authorized.
But there’s also a bigger picture where, again, insights can help you elevate care, run more efficiently and achieve growth. For example, are you using authorized hours at a suitable pace to meet payor expectations and ensure that the frequency and quality of services align with each child’s needs?
You could analyze this by collating data from session to session and comparing it against other information in a client’s file. But that would be cumbersome. It would also only help you with one child, by tracking how many hours of service each child is receiving compared to what is authorized or recommended in their treatment plan.
Insights allow you to pull data about utilization and pacing together for individual clients and across your entire ABA practice. For example they can:
- reveal patterns in service delivery, such as days or months when services peak or dip
- show if there are periods when children are not receiving services as planned, prompting immediate corrections
- help you analyze service pacing data to determine if current staffing levels are adequate to meet the needs of all clients, adjusting as necessary
- identify whether the services provided within the allocated time are being used efficiently and bring out opportunities to enhance productivity without compromising care quality
- help you spot locations or therapists with higher levels of cancellation or under-utilization than others
- help to determine which billing codes are under-utilized and identify utilization data by funding source
- analyze scheduling to ensure approved hours are scheduled
Illustrative Practice Insights Dashboard (Source: RethinkBH Analytics)
Balancing Client and Business Outcomes
While insights do take you further than data, they aren’t intended to replace your human touch in ABA therapy. They enhance it. Nuanced insights do more than improve efficiency; they deepen your commitment to the children you serve and strengthen the entire team.
With each insight-driven adjustment, your practice becomes more adept at meeting your clients’ individualized needs, reinforcing the bonds of trust and care that define your work. By surfacing insights as effectively as possible, BCBAs and practice owners can focus on what matters—providing direct, impactful care to children and families.
Think of insights as a hidden superpower. They boost your ability to apply your skills where they count the most. Insights extracted from your data give your practice the tools to deliver high-quality care efficiently and sustainably. They allow you to extend your reach without sacrificing the quality of your work while empowering your practice to thrive and grow.
For More Insights
Learn more about the power of analytics for clinical and practice outcomes by watching the replay of our recent webinar, “Transform Your ABA Practice with Analytics and AI: Turning Data into Actionable Insights.”
