ABA Medicaid Rates in Texas (2026)

ABA Medicaid rates in Texas sit just under the national middle for individual therapy and at the very bottom for groups. Texas Medicaid pays $58.00 an hour for code 97153, one-on-one ABA delivered by a technician, 28th of 42 states and 8.6% below the national median of $63.44. That rate reflects a September 1, 2025 increase. On group ABA, Texas pays the lowest rates in the country for both technician-led and analyst-led sessions.

All figures here are compiled from official Texas Medicaid (TMHP) publications, and each rate links to its source document. Because most Texas Medicaid members are enrolled in health plans, the TMHP schedule is both a payment rate and the benchmark that plan contracts are measured against.

Texas publishes 97153 at $14.50 per 15-minute unit with no modifier, or $58.00 an hour, effective since September 1, 2025. Texas sits above the lowest states, New York at $38.52 and Louisiana at $40.00, but well below the national leaders: Alaska at $127.80, Georgia at $123.64 and Iowa at $114.36.

Since direct technician time is the largest block of hours in almost every treatment plan, 97153 drives an agency's revenue far more than any other code. A rank in the high twenties means Texas funds the core of ABA adequately rather than generously. The September 2025 increase moved the rate up, but it did not lift Texas into the upper half of states.

Texas pays its analyst codes with modifier HO, and those rates sit close to the national medians:

97155 pays $25.10 per unit, essentially at the national median of $101.04. The assessment (97151) pays $27.56 per unit and caregiver training (97156) pays $23.01. All three took effect September 1, 2025.

The analyst profile is balanced: no analyst code is far from the middle of the national distribution. That makes Texas predictable for BCBA staffing. An hour of analyst time is worth roughly the same whether it goes to supervision, assessment or parent training, so scheduling decisions can follow clinical need rather than chase the best-paying code.

Every Texas ABA code on the TMHP schedule is billed in 15-minute units, and the hourly figures here are four units. The distinguishing feature is the modifier.

The HO modifier

The analyst codes 97151, 97155, 97156 and 97158 carry modifier HO, which identifies the service as delivered at the behavior analyst level. Claims for analyst work billed without it will not match the published rate. The technician codes 97153 and 97154 are billed without a modifier.

Provider levels

Technician codes are tied to the behavior technician provider level, and analyst codes to the licensed behavior analyst. Texas does not rank a technician assessment-support rate on 97152, so assessment work in Texas runs through the analyst code.

Federal data for May 2025 puts the Texas median wage for the closest comparable technician occupation at $22.05 an hour, almost exactly the national $22.08. That wage is 54.0% of the 97153 rate, leaving a margin of $26.66 an hour after a loaded wage to pay for supervision, travel, cancellations and administration.

The Texas analyst proxy wage is $30.11 an hour, against $28.53 nationally. Margins after a loaded wage:

• 97155: wage share 42.6%, margin $57.60 an hour.
• 97151: wage share 38.8%, margin $67.44 an hour.
• 97156: wage share 46.5%, margin $49.24 an hour.

Both wage figures use proxy occupations and are floors rather than market pay for credentialed staff. The technician margin is the number that matters most. More than half of the 97153 rate goes to the technician's wage, so cancellations, drive time between homes and non-billable documentation eat into a thin cushion quickly. Texas agencies that hold margin tend to do it with dense scheduling, clinic-based sessions that cut travel and tight authorization management, rather than by relying on the rate.

Texas is last in the nation on both group codes. Technician-led groups (97154) pay $1.63 per unit, or $6.52 an hour, 78.2% below the national median of $29.96. Missouri at $8.20 and North Dakota at $10.88 are the next-lowest. Analyst-led groups (97158) pay $2.81 per unit, or $11.24 an hour, 69.9% below the national median of $37.30, just under Connecticut at $11.88 and Louisiana at $12.00.

Both group rates still carry a March 1, 2024 effective date; the September 2025 increase did not reach them. Group rates are billed per member, so a group of several clients earns several times the per-hour figure, but even so the group codes in Texas rarely cover the staff time. At these rates, group sessions are hard to justify on revenue grounds, and agencies should plan for individual sessions to carry the caseload, using groups only where the clinical case is strong.

Texas publishes detailed ABA limits alongside its rates:

• 97153, 97154, 97155 and 97158 share a combined per-day limit. Every hour of technician therapy, analyst treatment and group ABA on a given day counts against the same cap.
• 97151 is limited per evaluation or re-evaluation, with a 30-day authorization period, and carries two prior authorization rules.
• 97153, 97154, 97155, 97156 and 97158 each carry one prior authorization rule; T1027 carries none.

For scheduling, the combined daily cap is the rule that matters most. An analyst's protocol-modification time and a technician's direct time on the same day draw from one pool, so supervision overlap needs to be planned within the cap. Caregiver training on 97156 sits outside the combined limit, which makes it the natural code for analyst work on days when the cap is already close. The 30-day window on the assessment also means intake needs to move quickly: an authorization that expires before the evaluation is complete forces a new request.

For ABA, Texas's rule is that plans negotiate their own rates, and the published rate applies out of network. An ABA agency contracted with a Texas Medicaid plan is paid its contract rate, and the TMHP schedule is the benchmark and the default for out-of-network claims. Our data counts 19 plans. See Texas managed care rules.

The practical effect is that an agency's real rate depends on its contracts. Wherever a child's Medicaid coverage runs through a plan, including state-set programs such as STAR Kids, ABA revenue flows through that plan's contract rather than direct TMHP payment. Two things follow. First, the TMHP rate is the floor to negotiate from: a contract below it means the agency would be better paid out of network. Second, a TMHP rate change does not automatically pass through to contracted rates; agencies need to check whether their contracts reference the state schedule or fix their own rates.

Texas's recent ABA rate history:

1. March 1, 2024: Reimbursement Rate Changes and Updates for Certain Texas Medicaid Procedure Codes, a 1.98% change, published January 19, 2024. A Biennial Calendar Fee Review with a 1.7% change went to hearing for the same date.
2. September 1, 2025: Reimbursement Rate Updates for Procedure Codes Presented at the July 22, 2025, Public Rate Hearing, a 10.0% change, published August 21, 2025.
3. September 1, 2025: GAA 2026-27 Art. II HHSC Rider 30: Rate Increase for Applied Behavior Analysis Services and Report on Autism Services, enacted and published September 18, 2025.

A separate notice of proposed adjustments covering applied behavior analysis services, along with fetal medicine radiology and a dental rate reallocation, went to hearing with a September 1, 2025 date and a -40.4% figure. The current rates above are the ones in effect.

Texas changes Medicaid rates through a public process: proposed adjustments are noticed, presented at a public rate hearing, and then take effect, often on September 1 or March 1. Rider 30 shows the other path, where the legislature directs funding for a specific service in the biennial appropriations act.

For planning, that means three signals to watch. The biennial fee review can move rates up or down for whole groups of codes. Legislative riders in each biennium can add targeted increases for ABA. And the group codes, untouched since March 2024, are the line most likely to change if the state revisits ABA again. Agencies should budget on the current rates and treat any increase as upside until the TMHP notice is published.

Texas is a middle-of-the-pack state on individual ABA and an outlier on groups. Against neighbors, Louisiana pays less on both technician and analyst time, and Oklahoma ABA rates offer another regional comparison for agencies operating across state lines. At the top, Alaska, Georgia and Iowa pay far more than Texas for technician time, and Vermont leads on analyst treatment.

For a multi-state operator, Texas is a volume state rather than a rate state: the scale of its Medicaid program, with 139,525 current rates across all services, matters more than the per-hour figure.

1. Model the daily cap first. Build schedules around the combined per-day limit, then fill remaining analyst time with 97156.
2. Compare each plan contract with TMHP. Because the published rate applies out of network, it is the minimum a contract should beat.
3. Price groups honestly. At current group rates, groups are a clinical choice, not a revenue line.
4. Watch September and March. Those are the dates Texas rate changes most often take effect.

Rates are compiled from official Texas Medicaid publications, including the TMHP Texas Medicaid fee schedules and rate-hearing notices, and each rate links to its source document. Rates published per 15-minute unit are converted to hourly figures by multiplying by four, and rankings compare the same service at the same provider level across states. Wage figures use federal occupational data for May 2025. See our methodology, the national ranking of ABA Medicaid rates by state, the Texas Medicaid rates hub, and pricing for the full dataset.