Happy holidays to all of our membership as we wrap up quite an eventful 2019! This quarterly newsletter provides a recap of 2019, as well as updates on current activities for the association, to include each of our committees. It’s been a busy year!

• MiBAP was officially established as a 501(c)(6) non-profit association in April 2019. We began with fifteen (15) Founding Members and ended the year with a total of twenty (20) member organizations. Our Members serve over 60% of the ASD-diagnosed individuals currently enrolled in the MI Medicaid Autism Program – thousands of families across the state. Nine leaders from our ABA member companies were voted in as the first MiBAP Board of Directors.
• We have initiated a wide range of outreach efforts, to include meetings with numerous members of the Michigan legislature, private payor leadership, and the Michigan Autism Council. We also held our first organizational event at the Michigan Autism Conference (MAC). Three of our members served on the FY19 Michigan Autism Program legislative work group, providing significant feedback to the FY20 autism budget and policy language.
• MiBAP weighed in on several ABA-related policy issues throughout the course of the year, to include publication of several letters and position papers:
  • ABA Supervision for MI Autism Program by non-credentialed (QBHP) supervisors
  • Changes to Criminal Background Check Requirements for Behavior Technicians
  • Letter in response to MI FY20 Budget Section 924
  • Michigan ABA Advocacy Talking Points 2019
• We have scheduled our first-ever MiBAP Advocacy/Legislative Day on February 5, 2020. Be sure to register for this important event!
• We launched the MiBAP web site, along with a MiBAP logo and Founding Member designation.

MiBAP has also established several committees; a brief summary of their current efforts and additional 2019 accomplishments follows.

Access
Chair: Adam Bennett, Kalamazoo Autism Center (KAC)
Description: The MiBAP Access Committee focuses on identifying and removing barriers to service, to include educating others about diagnostic requirements and the process by which services may be obtained, evaluating diagnostic bottlenecks and network insufficiencies which may prevent clients from accessing services in a timely manner, examining reimbursement rates and unintended consequences of legislative changes to rates (e.g., reductions in services to school-aged children and children with severe problem behavior), working to ensure that payors are not in violation of state mandates and/or federal law, and removing barriers to school and community-based services.
2019 Activities: The Access Committee has developed a survey and distributed this to members of MiBAP in hopes of identifying commonly encountered barriers to services and to guide our future agenda. Once these data are collected, we will begin developing a plan of action while also soliciting the same data from other Michigan providers and families who have encountered barriers to service. In addition, we have begun discussions with legal experts regarding diagnostic requirements and treatment limitations to ensure that payors are not imposing restrictions on service provision which result in unnecessary delays for families.

Advocacy
Chair: Jeff Brown, Centria Healthcare
Description: The Advocacy Committee reaches out to key stakeholders on issues and positions both within and outside the ABA community, to include legislators and payors. We advocate for the use of ABA services in environments where behavioral interventions can improve an individual or organization’s well-being and/or performance, to include the treatment of autism, traumatic brain injury, and intellectual and developmental disabilities.
2019 Activities: MiBAP had a busy year of advocacy in 2019, to include the publishing of several position papers (see above) and meetings with many key legislators, to include both the Senate and House Appropriations Chair and other important policy makers. We successfully impacted FY20 autism budget and policy language, in particular Sections 924, 959, and 960, and provided ongoing support to protecting both Medicaid and private payor rates for ABA services.

Education
Chair: Maggie Moore, Hope Network
Description: The Education Committee seeks to educate the public, parents, medical professionals, school staff, MiBAP members, state and local legislators, and other stakeholders on the science of Applied Behavior Analysis (ABA) and the benefits and cost savings achievable through effective interventions. Goals of the committee include creating operational definitions of MiBAP committees and disseminating to members; curating the MiBAP newsletter; and, curating additional educational resources for members to access.
2019 Activities: The Education Committee has evaluated priorities and selected an initial focus on member communications, to include this quarterly newsletter.

Quality
Chair: Zach Dugger, Braintrust Behavioral Health
Description: The Quality committee of MiBAP seeks to provide formal recommendations on standards of practice as it relates to the quality of clinical service provision as well as outcomes measurement practice. Goals of the committee include identification of the elements of quality service; defining the outcomes that can be expected from quality services; and. influencing creation or identification of a tool that can be utilized for measuring outcomes to make formal recommendations on the use of these tools.
2019 Activities: The committee is currently seeking consultation from an external professional on current/active efforts on defining quality and outcomes measurement. This will create the foundation for our review and research into existing work to minimize reinvention of the wheel. The committee is also looking to gather and evaluate current quality initiatives within its member organizations.

Membership
Chair: Josh Diehl, LOGAN Community Resources, Inc.
Description: The Membership Committee is devoted to maintaining the health and vitality of MiBAP. We plan and execute strategies for maintaining and increasing our membership, including events and other types of outreach.
2019 Activities: The Membership Committee successfully recruited fifteen (15) Founding Members, and twenty (20) total members in 2019. A successful reception was also held at the MAC Conference, with 75+ attendees.

We look forward to another successful and impactful year in 2020!

Warm Regards,
Mike Dow, Acorn Health

President, MiBAP