The Misclassification of Behavior Analysts: How National Provider Identifiers (NPIs) Fail to Adequately Capture the Scope of the Field.

Abstract

To remain in compliance with the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act of 1996, U.S. health care providers are required to register for a National Provider Identifier (NPI). When applying for an NPI, providers must select the Healthcare Provider Taxonomy Code(s) that most closely describes the services they offer. Three distinct taxonomies describe the services offered by behavior analysts. Two of these codes, the Behavior Analyst (103K00000X) and the Assistant Behavior Analyst (106E00000X) taxonomies, specify that the health care provider must hold either a certification from the Behavior Analyst Certification Board or a state-issued credential to practice behavior analysis. The purpose of this study was to investigate the concordance between health care providers who utilize these behavior-analytic NPI taxonomy classifications and health care providers who meet the credential qualifications specified in the code descriptions. Results indicated that there are potentially more than 20,000 U.S. health care providers who do not hold the behavior analyst credentials specified in the taxonomy descriptions linked to their accounts. The implications of providers being mistakenly classified as credentialed behavior analysts and credentialed assistant behavior analysts in federal data and how the field should respond are discussed.