Writing ABA Session Notes belongs in serious BCBA study because it shapes whether behavior-analytic decisions stay useful once they leave a clean training example and enter clinic sessions and day-to-day service delivery. In Writing ABA Session Notes, for this course, the practical stakes show up in service continuity, accurate reporting, and defensible clinical decisions, not in abstract discussion alone.
Provider: BehaviorLive
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Join Free →If you are tired of doing 'all of the things' to try and figure out what is needed to demonstrate medical necessity, make sure you are in compliance with payor requirements, and ensure your ABA session note audits pass without funds being recouped... then this is for you. This comprehensive course provides you with of the information you will need to write high-quality ABA session notes so you can go from overwhelmed, unsure, and burnout to confident...in just 3 hours. After completing the course, you will have identified medical necessity and its importance to ABA session notes, identified essential clinical and non-clinical session note components, set up a quality assurance system for performance feedback, and develop a system for internal audits to ensure compliance with requirements. You will learn how to create your own staff training resources, templates, and tools or you can access our already designed session note systems to maximize your time and focus on what is important for you and your clients...amazing clinical outcomes. Direct training, checklists, session note templates, fidelity rubrics, and feedback evaluation measures are presented for the 97151, 97153, 97155, and 97156 codes, outlining a systematic approach to generating more accurate and objective session notes. Learning Objectives After completing this course, participants will be able to: ● Identify medical necessity and understand its importance to ABA session notes ● Identify critical information for session notes to reduce the likelihood of recoupment ● Differentiate between socially significant and medically necessary behaviors ● Determine the essential clinical and non-clinical components of 97151, 97153, 97155, and 97156 session notes ● Identify potential outcomes of poor session notes ● Identify common mistakes when writing session notes ● Review current research regarding writing ABA session notes ● Identify the core characteristics of ASD per the DSM-5 and how this relates to writing medically necessary session notes ● Develop a quality assurance (QA) system for delivering feedback and monitoring session note quality
| Certification Body | Credits | Type |
|---|---|---|
| BACB® | 3.5 | General |
Dr. Hughes-Lika is a Board Certified Behavior Behavior Analyst at the doctoral level (BCBA-D), a licensed behavior analyst (LBA), an International Behavior Analyst (IBA), and an Early Start Denver Model Certified Therapist and Trainer. She has been providing evidence-based services for children with autism and related disorders for over 29 years, and for the past 14 years, she has specialized in interventions for young autistic children (0-4 years). She completed her Bachelor of Arts degree in Psychology and Sociology from Saint Ambrose University, her Master of Arts degree in Applied Behavior Analysis from The Ohio State University, and her Ph.D. in Intellectual and Developmental Disabilities from the University of Kent in Canterbury, UK. She has taught both undergraduate and graduate courses on behavior analysis, positive behavior support, ASD, and supervision in the US and abroad. She is passionate about the dissemination of behavior analysis. In 2015, she was the recipient of the Society for the Advancement of Behavior Analysis (SABA) International Development Grant for her work to promote research, education, training, and behavior analysis for professionals and families in Albania. She presents her research at national and international conferences and her research studies are published in peer-reviewed journals. Her current research interests and publications are focused on the use of technology to disseminate evidence-based behavioral training to parents and caregivers of children with ASD (OPT-In-Early), the implementation of Naturalistic Developmental Behavioral Interventions (NDBIs) for infants and toddlers with ASD, and competency-based supervision systems. She is the founder of The NDBI Navigator, an organization dedicated to supporting professionals working with young autistic children. Rooted in the principles of Naturalistic Developmental Behavioral Interventions (NDBIs), it offers accessible, evidence-based, and developmentally appropriate resources to help clinicians, educators, and behavior analysts turn knowledge into meaningful practice.
Dig into the research behind this topic — plain-English summaries written for BCBAs.
279 research articles with practitioner takeaways
258 research articles with practitioner takeaways
239 research articles with practitioner takeaways
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All behavior-analytic intervention is individualized. The information on this page is for educational purposes and does not constitute clinical advice. Treatment decisions should be informed by the best available published research, individualized assessment, and obtained with the informed consent of the client or their legal guardian. Behavior analysts are responsible for practicing within the boundaries of their competence and adhering to the BACB Ethics Code for Behavior Analysts.