Behavioral Health Tech 2026 Unveils Exclusive I/DD CEO Retreat

Why BHT Matters to ABA Operators

NASHVILLE, TENNESSEE — Behavioral Health Tech 2026 will co-locate with the Strategic Executive Expansion Retreat (SEER), an invite-only gathering convened by Consulting For Human Services for chief executives of the country’s largest I/DD providers, when the conference convenes at the Gaylord Opryland Resort and Convention Center September 22 through 24. SEER is structured around M&A and partnership conversations among operating-platform CEOs, and the co-location formalizes BHT’s positioning as an executive-tier event for the operators and capital behind autism and behavioral health services.

The conference itself runs two months earlier than the 2025 San Diego edition and brings more than 300 speakers across 45 hours of programming, according to the conference’s published materials. BHT fills with payers, digital health founders, employer benefits executives, Medicaid agency officials, and the venture and private equity associates underwriting both sides. Adding SEER puts the CEOs of the largest I/DD operating platforms in the same building during the same window.

Many BCBAs do not put BHT on their travel calendars. ABAI’s annual convention does that work, drawing the field’s clinical and academic leadership each May. BHT draws a different audience entirely, and that is why it matters to the autism services industry. The decisions made at BHT set the prior-authorization rules, the digital tool integrations, and the deal valuations that show up at home months later.

ABA companies that skip BHT miss the chance to hear how the funds writing their checks describe the industry behind closed doors.

The conference began in 2020 as a virtual gathering founded by Solome Tibebu, a behavioral health strategist who started her first mental health venture, Anxiety in Teens, at 16. Hyve Group acquired Behavioral Health Tech in July 2025, placing it in the same portfolio as HLTH, HLTH Europe, and ViVE. Tibebu remains founder and CEO.

The audience composition is the point. A working BCBA can find peers in any ABAI hallway. The hallway at BHT is a payer’s coverage director, a Series B founder, a state Medicaid policy lead, and a fund associate who covers both digital MH and ABA. Those four conversations, stacked across 2.5 days, are the value.

Carryover Themes From 2025

Four threads dominated the November 2025 edition in San Diego. Autism and neurodiversity ran as a named track. AI was reframed from cost-cutter to clinician co-pilot, with sessions on session note generation, supervision support, and outcomes documentation. Public-private partnership emerged as a path to profitability for digital health companies after a year of slowing venture funding. Person-centered care, the language payers have started to require in coverage decisions, anchored several panels.

Behavioral Health Tech also used 2025 to launch BHT Impact, an accelerator for youth-focused behavioral health innovators. The first cohort skewed toward adolescent mental health, peer support, and caregiver tools rather than autism-services-first companies. The track is one to watch as pediatric mental health and autism services keep converging at the operator level.

What changes in 2026: the preliminary agenda releases in June, with the full slate following in August. Expect the four 2025 threads to carry forward, with state Medicaid policy and employer benefits design likely to take a larger share of the stage than they did last cycle. The 2026 call for speakers, which closed in late March, asked specifically for sessions that move past commentary and offer real-world implementation cases.

Autism, Neurodiversity, and the Software Stack

The autism and neurodiversity track that ran in 2025 drew presentations from ABA-adjacent software vendors, AI-assisted note-writing tools, parent training apps, and remote supervision platforms. The framing across panels treated ABA software as part of the broader behavioral health stack rather than a clinical island. The 2026 call for speakers favored implementation-case sessions over high-level commentary, a filter that benefits vendors who can name specific client integrations and outcomes.

BHT is the room where ABA’s payers, software vendors, and investors rehearse decisions that show up months later in prior-authorization rules and deal valuations.

Practice owners reading the 2026 agenda for ABA-relevant content should look for sessions on Medicaid managed care contracting, autism-specific coverage policy, AI tooling for clinical documentation, and pediatric care coordination. The autism and neurodiversity track is where most of those land.

Where the Investors Will Be

The investor track at BHT overlaps with the funds underwriting ABA platforms. KKR started BlueSprig Pediatrics in 2018, and BlueSprig named Will Abbott chief executive in March 2025, according to Behavioral Health Business. The same firms holding ABA positions also hold digital mental health and substance use platforms in adjacent funds.

The convergence thesis, that mental health, substance use, and autism services are one underwriting category rather than three, gets rehearsed in those rooms before it gets priced into deal memos. ABA operators who want to know how their valuation multiples are modeled get more direct insight at BHT than at ABAI, where deal language stays in the hallway.

The capital layer around the conference itself adds another reading. Hyve Group, which acquired Behavioral Health Tech in July 2025, is backed by Providence Equity Partners and Searchlight Capital Partners. The conference now operates inside a private-equity-backed events portfolio that also includes HLTH and ViVE, two of the largest digital health convenings in the country.

What BHT Will Not Cover

BHT 2026 does not offer continuing education credit. The 2023 edition included up to 13 CE hours through a partnership with PESI; the 2026 conference is positioned as an executive event, according to the BHT site. Practice owners going for the first time should plan to spend most of their hours in the autism and neurodiversity track, the investor track, and one-on-one meetings booked in advance.

Within the ABA-relevant portion of the agenda, direct-care clinician concerns get less stage time than their operational weight warrants. RBT (registered behavior technician) workforce conditions, BCBA supervision ratios, and the operational reality of running a clinic at 65 percent labor cost rarely surface in standalone sessions on the ABA-adjacent tracks. Parent and caregiver perspectives appear in panels but do not anchor them on those tracks. State-by-state Medicaid rate disputes, the sharpest pressure point for most ABA owners in 2026, usually fold into broader policy panels rather than appear as standalone ABA sessions.

Pre-registration is open at behavioralhealthtech.com/pre-registration, with general admission at $2,413 through June 12 and rising to $3,148 after that date. Hosted VIP passes for senior decision-makers evaluating behavioral health solutions are complimentary and include up to $750 in travel reimbursement, and a limited number of government, press, and scholarship passes are available. The preliminary agenda is scheduled for release in June, with the full slate following in August.

AT A GLANCE

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