Assertive Community Treatment (ACT) team: Medicaid rates by state

States publish assertive Community Treatment (ACT) team under their own codes, modifiers and units. To compare them, this page picks the rate in each state that matches the same service and provider level.

• Provider level. States are compared at the unlicensed (bachelor's/master's) behavioral health practitioner level. Rates for other levels on file (any qualified provider, licensed mental health clinician, physician or licensed psychologist and agency provider) are kept separate, never mixed into this ranking.
• Unit. All 3 states publish their headline rate per 15 min, so the amounts compare directly. The ranking converts every time-based rate to an hour of service, so states that bill by the 15 minutes and by the hour compare directly.
• Variants. 2 of the 3 states publish more than one rate for this service (by modifier, program, setting or provider type); the headline rate is the one that matches the comparison, and the workspace lists every variant.
• Depth. 2,710 rates for this service are on file across all states, versions and provider levels; this page shows one headline rate per state.

The highest-paying state, New Mexico, pays $318.00 per hour; the lowest, Oklahoma, pays $23.96 per hour, a 13.3x gap. 1 of the 3 states pay above the median of $133.80 per hour. Common reasons rates for behavioral health services spread this way:

• Many states pay behavioral health services differently by the practitioner's credential, from psychiatrist and psychologist to licensed clinical social worker, counselor and peer specialist.
• Community mental health and substance use services are often billed under H and T codes that each state defines for itself, so the same code can describe a different service in two states.
• Behavioral health is frequently run through a separate state agency, a carve-out or a specialty plan, with its own rate-setting cycle.

Billing notes

Modifiers such as HO (master's level), HN (bachelor's level) and HP (doctoral level) identify the practitioner, and many states publish a different rate for each. Psychotherapy codes are defined by session length, so one unit is one session of the stated duration; H codes are billed in whatever unit the state defines, often 15 minutes, an hour or a day.