There are so many aspects of Applied Behavior Analysis (ABA) where the response to your investments is unknown. Does investment into training and professional development lead to better retention? Does switching revenue cycle management solutions improve your collection rate? One area where the return on investment (ROI) is easily measured is in scheduling and staffing optimization. Not only can you expect a substantial ROI after dedicating resources towards scheduling, you can see results within the first few months itself. We’ll talk about where the improvements will be seen and how to easily quantify the gains. We’ll also quantify how much you’re losing if your company uses Excel as it’s scheduling platform. Hopefully, these defined gains will give you the extra capital to invest in other areas of the business that are extremely necessary but where the return is a bit more unknown, speculative, or less financially-focused.

Table of Contents

1. Where do scheduling and staffing improvements show up financially within six months?
2. Any other potential bonus areas after 6 months?
3. Conclusion

Where do scheduling and staffing improvements show up financially within six months?

Better Waitlist Conversion

Nearly every ABA company has a waitlist of families that want services. However, that “want” does nothing for the benefit and health of your business. If anything, it’s only an ever-hanging monkey on your back because you feel bad that you can’t help more families. However, converting more families from the waitlist to active census drives meaningful revenue and income impact to your company. These numbers are averages and certainly impacted by treatment intensity, reimbursement level and geography (which affects wages), but each client you don’t staff and stays on your waitlist is ~$50k in revenue and ~$20k in gross profit on average per year that you’re leaving on the table. Scheduling automation can recommend more matches with suggested schedules and you can expect to convert far more of your waitlist. Customers on Teamwork’s scheduling platform generally see a 40% census gain within 6 months. For an ABA company with 100 patients, that means they’ll be making $2 million in extra annualized revenue within 6 months and $800k in extra gross profit by replacing Excel with Teamwork’s scheduling solution.

It’s known that it takes 6 months for the average family to get off the waitlist and get their child ABA services. Earlier intervention means that families get staffed faster, which also means that your company generates revenue faster. If you’re the average ABA company, that means that you’re leaving $25k per year in revenue and $10k in gross profit per family because you squandered half a year to find an appropriate team for them. With Teamwork, ABA companies are 5x faster than the industry average and staff families off the waitlist in a month. With an extra 5 months of earlier revenue and gross profit, you’d make an extra $21k revenue and extra $8.3k in gross profit in the coming twelve months. Do that for 100 families and you’re making an extra $2.1 million in revenue and $830k in gross profit in the next twelve months.

Better Therapist Utilization

Determining the financial impact of improving therapist utilization is relatively complex. Are you talking about Board Certified Behavior Analysts (BCBAs) or Behavior Technicians (BTs)? Are they paid hourly or are they salaried? Are you in California with mandated breaks? Are there overtime considerations? Are your therapists home-based and traveling to multiple locations or working out of one center? To simplify it, let’s focus on BTs and let’s say the average BT at an ABA company bills 25 hours per week. At a reimbursement rate of $60 per hour, a wage of $30 per hour, and working 50 weeks per year, they’re bringing in $75k in revenue and $37k of gross profit (because their annualized wage is $37k). With scheduling automation, you can increase billable hours per week by finding replacements more easily and staffing more clients for therapists that match the gaps in the therapists’ availability. As such, customers with Teamwork generally see a 20% increase in therapist utilization, with this example getting from 25 to 30 billable hours per week. If your therapists are paid hourly, that’s an extra $15k in revenue and $7.5k in gross profit per therapist. At 100 therapists, you’re looking at an extra $750k per year in profit if your therapists are paid hourly or $1.5 million if your therapists are salaried.

Increased Administrative Efficiency

First off, if your Clinical Directors or Lead BCBAs are doing scheduling, please give them a round of applause for all the extra hats they wear. However, the scheduling hat they’re wearing is also non-billable time. If they’re spending 10 hours a week on scheduling, assuming a reimbursement rate of $100 per hour, that’s roughly $50k a year in revenue that your company is losing per clinical leader.

If you’re a larger practice that has dedicated administrative support to the clinical team, you likely have 1 scheduler for every 50 active clients that you support. That’s roughly $50k in overhead needed to support existing and new families and therapists. Teamwork’s customers have felt that their schedulers have far more efficiency to do their jobs because a lot of the manual outreach and communication is automated. With Teamwork, organizations are moving to have the same scheduling overhead to support 200 families. As such, our customers expect to save $75k for every 100 new families they service.

Any other potential bonus areas after six months?

There are several other benefits to ABA companies after the six-month mark with scheduling automation. We just find it hard to quantify given there are so many variables impacting them. If you don’t think the return on investment is already high enough, consider the retention improvements you can expect when therapists are earning more hours within your organization. You may also be able to focus on limiting overtime payment and non-billable hours once you’ve finished optimizing billable hours as well. Additionally, by better analyzing appointment data and utilization patterns, your leadership can start making more strategic decisions. This data-driven approach can lead to better resource allocation (targeted marketing or recruiting efforts) and improved waitlist engagement strategies, all of which contribute to ROI. Lastly, the reliability of better scheduling can lead to a better brand identity in your communities leading to more therapists joining and more families reaching out.

Conclusion

Investing in scheduling tools is the most strategic and quantifiable thing you can do running an ABA practice. It may sound like we’re only trying to sell you something, but it’s also because we believed it so much that we built the tool for ourselves. Beyond the immediate gains in operational efficiency, these tools contribute to improved patient access, experience, and satisfaction. By reducing no-shows, staffing more families, and enabling data-driven decision-making, ABA companies have achieved anywhere from 5x to 30x ROI with Teamwork. In an industry where every dollar and minute counts, scheduling tools are a smart investment that pays dividends in both financial and patient-care terms.

If you hate Excel for scheduling, let’s talk! If you’re scared of how much money you’re losing or leaving on the table, let’s talk. If you want to even the playing field and have the same capabilities as other optimized ABA companies, you can start by scheduling a demo. 

Interested in Teamwork? Schedule a Demo!

At Teamwork,we pride ourselves on being different from our competition. Teamwork is built specifically for ABA providers with a focus on clinical quality. We automate manual work associated with scheduling (e.g. calculating commute times) so your team can focus on what’s important: delivering quality care to your patients.

Interested? Fill out the form below to sign-up for a demo of our tool!

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