FL Medicaid BA Services FABA STATES "SERIOUS CONCERNS": CONTACT FABA PoliticalAction@FABAworld.org

We want to provide the best quality Behavior Analysis services based on best practice but Florida's Medicaid / ACHA are not listening and this endangers many children in Florida, as well as businesses. Contact: PoliticalAction@FABAworld.org and tell them your story about our child, your family, your work as an individual, or your company and help them to advocate for our patients and staff. FABA has appropriately also raised the alert with the FL Medicaid Behavior Analysis program hindering our ability to provide medically necessary services for the special needs children in Florida. And providers who are not being paid because their authorizations, previously authorized, are delayed causing harm to our patients and ABA businesses. In February 2017, when the BA program was completely changed and began requiring a behavior plan prior to working with patients, removed indirects (paper work), and removed supervision of line therapists ... the FL Medicaid BA program has become aversive because of the increased difficulty for providers and limits our ability to provide quality services because the program does not pay enough in this format. Now adding injury to insult if you will, provider enrollment is not moving forward in a reasonable timeframe to provide services. This is an incredibly challenging profession and good people are not that easy to find. The work of a technician (line therapist) is a challenging profession and requires close supervision, guidance, and support to be successful. Without good supervision, burnout and turnover will only increase which in turn requires more providers to become enrolled. Just because someone is enrolled as a provider, does not mean they are currently working as a provider. ACHA indicated that the numbers of providers is very high in relation to the number of special needs children, but those numbers need to be qualified to determine whether they are actually current staff, for one. Authorization requests submitted a mere few months ago that were approved, are not being approved and Medicaid/eQHealth is requiring a great deal more documentation which causes delays in providing services. This delay is actually harmful for our special needs population that need consistent of treatment. Please contact FABA and tell them your story and pass it on PoliticalAction@FABAworld.org. More correct action needs to occur now ... not months or weeks from now.