Each week I interview an ABA company for the Featured Provider series and write up what BCBAs should know before applying. This week it’s Akoya Behavioral Health in Michigan. I spoke with Ian Santus, the company’s co-founder, COO, and clinical director. He’s a BCBA with 25 years in the field.
Akoya is about three years old and works across two markets, Detroit and Grand Rapids. Care runs in homes, clinics, schools, and the community. There are two clinics, one focused on early intervention and one on older kids working on social skills.
You pick the setting and the hours
Akoya’s hiring conversation starts with two questions. What environment do you want to work in, meaning home, clinic, school, or community. And how many hours do you want, in tiers of ten, twenty, thirty, or forty a week. Those two answers shape the caseload, and Ian checks them against real client capacity before making commitments. If the caseload you want exists, they staff it. If something close exists, he offers that with a plan to work toward the full ask. If neither exists, they part ways before anyone signs.
The schedules that come out of this vary a lot. Some clinicians do clinic afternoons Tuesday and Thursday, in-home evenings Monday and Wednesday, and Friday mornings from home. Roles run part time, full time, hybrid, salaried, and hourly. Ian was direct about the current shape of it. Full-time roles today are mostly clinic or hybrid, and part-time roles are mostly in-home.
Supervision and meeting structure
RBTs are allotted one paid meeting hour per client per month with their BCBA, usually taken as roughly fifteen minutes per client per week. An RBT working three or four cases gets 30 to 60 minutes of paid meeting time weekly. Paid RBT meeting time is still rare in this field.
For BCBAs, the support depends on setting. Clinic-based BCBAs have a clinical manager on site through the day. In-home BCBAs report directly to a clinical director, and there’s one clinical director per market. Supervisors meet their clinical manager one hour per week, each market holds a monthly all-clinical meeting for case consultation, and the full organization meets monthly. The cadence resembles what we’ve covered in structured 1-on-1 agendas and the mindset shifts that keep clinical teams stable.
The tools you’d work in
Akoya doesn’t use Central Reach. Clinical work runs on Hi Rasmus, and every BCBA has a live dashboard tracking expiring authorizations, supervision ratios, and rendered versus canceled hours. Technicians collect data in session and AI drafts much of the note. Ian’s assessment of Hi Rasmus, after ten-plus systems in 25 years, is that nothing on the market is better clinically.
The compliance side matters to clinicians more than it sounds. Before Akoya, Ian consulted for companies in serious trouble with insurance regulators, and he set this one up conservatively. Documentation is held to TriCare-level standards although Akoya doesn’t serve TriCare, and a dedicated auditing team reviews billing and records. Your name goes on that paperwork, so the standard protects you. Related reading from us on that topic is ethics and compliance for ABA businesses.
I’ve seen some of the darkest sides of ABA in terms of compliance issues. I’m pretty conservative in how we’ve set up this company, to ensure there’s no fraudulent billing and documentation standards are high quality.
— Ian Santus, BCBA, Co-founder, COO and Clinical Director, Akoya Behavioral Health
At a glance
- Settings: Home, clinic, school, and community
- Locations: Michigan, in Detroit and Grand Rapids
- Hiring status: Hiring now, across settings
- Notable perk: Paid monthly meeting time for every RBT
Akoya’s openings are on their careers page.
Run an ABA company you think BCBAs should know about? Reply to any Book Club email. I feature a new provider every week.
This is not a paid placement. Matt personally interviewed this company and receives no compensation for featuring them.