Montana's behavioral health sector added 55 providers in the latest CMS NPI registry update, representing 1% of the national weekly total. This update reveals a recent surge in activity, with 22 new providers joining this week, accounting for nearly all of the 23 providers added so far this year. The group is composed of 25 individuals and 30 organizations, with activity concentrated in Billings, Bozeman, and Helena.
Workforce Composition
Notably for the ABA industry, this update includes 0 BCBAs and 0 RBTs, indicating that the recent growth is occurring outside the applied behavior analysis field. Instead, the workforce is dominated by licensed professional counselors. The data shows 7 Licensed Clinical Professional Counselors (LCPCs) and 2 Licensed Addiction Counselors (LACs). One provider held both credentials, meaning these categories are not mutually exclusive. Other individual credentials included one Licensed Clinical Social Worker (LCSW) and one Speech-Language Pathologist (SLP).
Provider Demographics
Among the 25 individual providers, the workforce is predominantly female at 88%, or 22 providers. Male providers constitute the remaining 12%. No specific organizations were listed multiple times in this update, suggesting a fragmented landscape of smaller practices rather than the expansion of large, private equity-backed chains common in other states.
This data suggests that while Montana's broader behavioral health capacity is expanding, this growth wave does not currently include the ABA-specific workforce needed to increase access to autism services.
