Autism care has attracted significant investment, expanded access and helped more families get care. But rapid growth also brings greater scrutiny. David Essary, CEO of Parity Plus and father of an autistic daughter, will explore what happens when quality, transparency and accountability do not keep pace with growth—and why that matters to providers, investors and families alike.

Autism care is under pressure to deliver better outcomes, protect access and keep spending in check. Those pressures will intensify in years to come. In this opening conversation, key industry stakeholders will share what they most need from one another over the next several years and where they see room for real alignment. Attendees will hear the biggest fault lines, the shared priorities and the practical signals to watch as the ecosystem resets.

For many families, the first call, web inquiry, or intake form is the moment access to ABA therapy is won or lost, and AI is changing how organizations handle it. In this panel, Kris Gochenour, CFO at Autism Care Partners, sits down with David Cristman, Co-Founder and COO of Anonymous Health in a fireside chat about where to start, how to prioritize AI for both clinicians and families, and where it is delivering value today, drawing on what surprises and added benefits they see in day-to-day application. Presenters will discuss the safety, ethics, and equity guardrails that matter at the front door of behavioral health, and how to bring teams along when new tools disrupt traditional practice, closing with a look at what the future holds for AI in ABA therapy settings.

What if therapists could see—and own—their path to career growth? Join Anne Swinney, COO of FirstSteps for Kids, and strategic technology partner Lumary for a fireside chat on connecting professional development, consistent client care and fiscal health. Discover how real-time dashboards and FirstSteps’ innovative Open Steps program make advancement transparent, recognize great talent and give leadership the confidence to align compensation with performance—a compelling model for workforce retention and sustainable growth.

Health plans are seeking more sustainable, accountable approaches to autism care that move beyond fragmented services and sole reliance on ABA. This panel will discuss the key principles, partnerships, and strategies providers need to understand as payers prioritize individualized and whole-person care, measurable outcomes, timely access and responsible stewardship of resources.

Government officials are tightening oversight of autism therapy through many changes to reimbursement levels, policy and law. This session explores how they balance access, cost and program integrity with demands for measurable outcomes and quality. Providers will hear what policymakers want to see from individual providers and from the industry as a whole.

Authorization delays, denials, and disconnected workflows continue to create friction between ABA providers and payors. But what will it take to move forward? This session examines where today's system falls short, what needs to change, and how providers and payors can move beyond longstanding challenges toward a more efficient, collaborative, and sustainable future for autism care.

Health plans are rethinking how they design and manage autism benefits, from clinical standards and utilization rules to network strategy. In this session, payer executives share how they assess value, decide where coverage is sustainable and where they see overuse or overpayment risk. Attendees will hear directly what data, outcomes and provider practices most influence payer decisions in today’s environment.

AI's most immediate and practical value lies in alleviating the administrative burdens surrounding care delivery, and those burdens are growing fast. Payers are changing ABA requirements state by state as they catch up with demand, adding new documents, authorizations, and follow-ups to every case. Intake teams absorb that work, families are left unsure of what they need to start care, and fewer of them make it to a first session. This session examines how automation and AI workflows are actively functioning within behavioral health today: resolving operational bottlenecks across family inquiries, intake coordination, benefits verification, scheduling, and routine documentation. Yoni Belson will explore the practical realities of operational adoption, analyzing its impact on organizational capacity, administrative overhead, and team retention. The session concludes with a live walkthrough of an automated intake workflow, demonstrating how practices can reduce friction and accelerate the transition from a family's initial contact to assessment readiness.

As scrutiny of autism services increases, providers and investors need a clearer picture of the organizational systems supporting quality and sustainable growth. This session explores how accreditation evaluates the infrastructure behind quality ABA services, including supervision, documentation, governance, and outcomes review. Drawing on federal oversight findings, the CMS ABA Toolkit, and state accreditation requirements, participants will examine how implementation evidence can inform operational decisions, transaction diligence, and readiness for ownership transitions.

Learning Objectives

By the end of this session, participants will be able to:

1. Distinguish organizational accreditation from individual certification and clinical practice guidelines.

2. Describe how federal oversight and state accreditation requirements affect provider readiness and investment considerations.

3. Identify evidence demonstrating that quality systems operate consistently beyond written policies.

4. Apply accreditation-related questions to assess organizational sustainability, growth readiness, and ownership transitions.

As payers and governments put more pressure on providers, the industry is still seeing steady dealmaking. This session brings together investors and operators to assess where deal flow is coming from, how underwriting assumptions have shifted and what separates the platforms attracting capital from those sitting on the shelf.

The next competitive advantage in ABA isn't doing more work. It's eliminating the wrong work. Machines thrive on the forms, rules and repetition that drain people; clinicians thrive with kids, making an impact. So we set the moonshot: the Zero-Admin Clinician. Every hour a BCBA or RBT works goes to care, while AI agents take on the back-office tasks, with a human manager approving the work. This replaces tasks, not people. The goal is a lighter load for clinicians, billers and office staff, so practices can grow to meet their waitlists. The payoff compounds: clinical capacity, retention, outcomes and enterprise value.

As payer scrutiny of autism therapy claims grows, providers need a revenue cycle that holds up under audit. Executives and investors discuss how denial root-cause insights, national benchmarking, and automation protect cash flow and clinical credibility.

Two industry CEOs sit down for an unfiltered discussion about what it really takes to run and grow autism platforms in today’s environment. They’ll compare how they are rethinking strategy, capital allocation and operating models and retention in light of reimbursement contraction and shifting regulatory expectations. Attendees will hear where these leaders are doubling down, what they’re cutting, and how they’re preparing their organizations for the next wave of change.