Arkansas Created a Master’s-Level Psychology License. Its Autism Panel Wants It Counted for Waivers.

LITTLE ROCK, ARKANSAS – Arkansas’s Legislative Task Force on Autism wants the General Assembly to add one profession to the short list of clinicians whose autism evaluations can help establish a person’s eligibility for the state’s two developmental disability waivers. The request leads the report the panel adopted on August 26, a two-page memorandum dated August 31 and signed by co-chairs Sen. Justin Boyd and Rep. Denise Jones Ennett, addressed to the Senate president pro tempore and the House speaker. The posted draft lists six priorities; before adopting it, the panel voted to add a seventh, expanding Autism Waiver slots when the Department of Human Services has the money, according to the legislature’s recording of the meeting. The final version sent to legislative leaders was not available for review.

The profession is the licensed psychological practitioner, or LPP, a master’s-level license Arkansas created in 2025 as it rewrote the rules for independent practice at the master’s level. Under current law, an autism diagnosis counts toward eligibility for the Autism Waiver and the Community and Employment Supports Waiver, known as CES, only when at least two professionals of different types each conclude that the diagnostic criteria are fully met, and they must come from a list of three: a licensed physician, a licensed psychologist, or a licensed speech-language pathologist. Applicants must also meet each waiver’s other eligibility rules. The task force wants LPPs added as a fourth evaluator type.

The change aims to address wait times for an evaluation. The University of Arkansas for Medical Sciences said in September 2025 that its two developmental centers, which take referrals from across the state, often have waits of up to a year. The Jonesboro examiner who brought the proposal to the task force in June put the wait for a qualifying evaluation at 12 to 18 months. A second queue sits behind the first, and more evaluators alone would not shorten it. The Autism Waiver can serve 180 children at a time, and Karan Burnette, whose University of Arkansas program administers the waiver and who sits on the task force, told the panel on August 26 that 148 children were on its waiting list, 536 more families were completing applications, and 56 children had turned 5 in July and August while waiting, the birthday after which the waiver no longer admits them, according to the recording. She asked the panel to add the slot expansion to the report, and it did.

The recommendation does not itself change Medicaid policy. Adding LPPs to the statutory list would take a bill in the session that convenes January 11, 2027; pre-filing opens November 16.

What the Statute Requires Now

The rule sits in the statute that created the Autism Waiver, Arkansas Code 20-77-124. Before 2021, it referred to a diagnostic team “including without limitation” a physician, a psychologist, and a speech-language pathologist. Act 656 of 2021 closed the list: a qualifying diagnosis now requires at least two “qualified professionals,” a term the statute limits to those three licenses. Act 386 of 2025, approved March 20, added the requirement that the professionals be “of different types.”

That definition reaches past the waiver it was written for. The eligibility statute for the CES Waiver, the state’s main home- and community-based program for people with developmental disabilities, counts autism as a qualifying condition only “as established under § 20-77-124.” In September 2026, Gov. Sarah Huckabee Sanders and DHS announced a plan, estimated at $17 million, to offer in-home supportive living services to families on the CES waiting list through the PASSEs, the provider-led managed care plans that coordinate Medicaid services for Arkansans with developmental disabilities or complex behavioral health needs, targeting January 2027 with funding to be worked out with legislators. More than 2,400 people were on that list. And the Medicaid manual that governs ABA therapy for children on the state plan, in force since January 1, 2025, requires an autism diagnosis “established in accordance with” the same section. The same three-profession list therefore sits under autism-based eligibility for both waivers and, by cross-reference, under state-plan ABA, where the state’s review contractor has read the psychologist category to include psychological examiners.

The 2025 License and Its Sponsor

Act 433 of 2025, approved April 3, created the licensed psychological practitioner as an independent license, removed the statute’s old pathway for psychological examiners to gain independent-practice status, and barred new examiner licenses after December 31, 2026. Under the Psychology Board’s rules, the standard path requires a 60-hour master’s degree in health services psychology with an 800-hour practicum, 3,000 hours of supervised post-degree work, and board examinations. Examiners who held independent-practice status on or before December 31, 2024, can apply through a transition provision that waives those requirements. An LPP may independently diagnose, treat, and manage “mental and emotional disorders or developmental and intellectual disabilities,” within the practitioner’s coursework, training, and supervised experience, though not perform neuropsychological, forensic, or projective personality assessment without supervision.

The legislature that required two evaluators of different types also created, two weeks later, the license the task force now wants added, and Rep. Lee Johnson, a Sebastian County physician, sponsored both bills. Neither act refers to the other.

The case for adding LPPs came to the task force on June 4 from Daniel Wysocki, a Jonesboro psychological examiner who owns a testing practice. His written proposal argued that LPPs are qualified to administer the ADOS-2, a standard observational autism assessment (training in the instrument is separate from the license), and are authorized by Act 433 to diagnose autism, yet “are not yet recognized to provide eligibility for the Autism or CES waivers” because the waiver statute predates the license. The proposal said Arkansas Medicaid “will credential and pay LPPs to perform psychological evaluations, but it rejects those same evaluations as ‘proof’ for the Autism Waiver due to outdated language in Act 656.” The proposal did not document a specific denial, and the claim could not be independently confirmed from the public record; the statute’s list simply does not name LPPs. BreakingNewsABA reported on that meeting in June.

“Expand the pool of qualified autism evaluators by recognizing Licensed Psychological Practitioners (LPPs) for Autism Waiver and Community and Employment Supports (CES) Waiver eligibility determinations.” – Arkansas Legislative Task Force on Autism, report to legislative leadership, as posted in draft (August 2026)

The supply numbers behind the proposal are public. The state’s most recent health-workforce report, published in February 2026, counted 598 psychology licensees with Arkansas mailing addresses in 2024: 379 psychologists, 35 psychological examiners, and 184 independent psychological examiners. Thirty of the state’s 75 counties had none, and 12 had one. The report counts mailing addresses, not practice sites, autism training, or Medicaid participation. Wysocki estimated that recognizing LPPs would raise the state’s capacity for the required testing by 44%, counting 267 professionals; his proposal does not show the calculation or how many additional evaluations those practitioners could deliver.

The report’s first-listed priority matches what Wysocki proposed in June.

What the Proposal Could Mean for ABA Providers

For ABA providers, the diagnosis rule is the front of the Medicaid referral pipeline. Arkansas Medicaid’s ABA benefit, part of the EPSDT children’s benefit (Early and Periodic Screening, Diagnostic, and Treatment), covers eligible members from 18 months until their 21st birthday; a diagnosis alone does not establish medical necessity, and assessment and treatment both require prior authorization. For fee-for-service members, Acentra Health, the state’s utilization review contractor, reviews the request, where a BCBA reads it; PASSE members go through their plan’s care coordinator. Acentra’s November 2025 provider guidance accepts a diagnostic evaluation from a licensed physician, a speech-language pathologist, or a licensed psychologist, a heading under which it lists the LP, LPE, and LPE-I credentials, paired with a physician’s acknowledgment of the diagnosis in exam notes or a letter. The guidance does not mention LPPs, and a training slide’s grouping does not make an examiner a licensed psychologist under the statute.

The task force’s report names only the two waivers. Because the ABA manual incorporates the statute’s definition rather than listing professions itself, adding LPPs to that definition could reach diagnostic documentation for state-plan ABA as well as the waivers; the effect would depend on the enacted wording and on how DHS implements it. The recommendation itself changes no authorization requirement.

The Autism Waiver sits beside, not inside, the ABA benefit. The University of Arkansas’s Partners for Inclusive Communities, which runs the waiver’s intake and waiting list, describes it as intensive in-home intervention that is “NOT strictly an ABA program.” It can begin at 18 months, requires enrollment in a slot on or before the child’s fifth birthday, and may run up to three years, ending by the eighth birthday. Its interventionists must have at least two years of relevant experience with children with autism plus either BCBA certification or a master’s or more advanced degree in psychology, speech-language pathology, occupational therapy, special education, or a related field, and line therapists may deliver up to 25 hours a week. A child enrolled in the waiver may not receive state-plan ABA at the same time. The program served 241 children in the year that ended June 30, 2025, and Partners reported 4,556 applications from the program’s start in 2012 through September 26, 2025.

The panel also heard directly from the ABA community on August 13, when it discussed its priorities and the report deadline. Rachel Dodson, a task force member, and Jessica Lenehan, clinical director of Every Little Step ABA in Little Rock, walked through reauthorization fights over Dodson’s 9-year-old daughter’s ABA hours under a state employee health plan and Medicaid, and Courtney Slack of Empower Healthcare Solutions, one of the four PASSEs, explained how plans notify families and approve ABA. Neither the posted draft’s six priorities nor the seventh added on August 26 mentions prior authorization or medical necessity review.

Kansas Medicaid has taken a different approach to its autism treatment benefit. For dates of service from November 1, its bulletin requires members 20 and younger to have a diagnosis from a licensed clinical psychologist or a qualified physician, with two years for current recipients whose diagnosis came from someone else to get an updated one, which need not be a full new evaluation. Arkansas’s proposal concerns waiver eligibility and is not law. CMS’s August 2026 ABA toolkit leaves the choice of qualified diagnosticians to states and lists developmental pediatricians, child psychologists, and psychiatrists among its examples; it does not address Arkansas’s LPPs, and its account of families waiting two years between screening and diagnosis comes from stakeholder reports, not an Arkansas measurement.

What a Bill Would Need

Wysocki proposed one clause adding licensed psychological practitioners to the statute’s definition of a qualified professional. The Autism Waiver’s federal approval document, effective July 1, 2024, repeats the three-profession list in its own eligibility criteria, so DHS would also have to amend the waiver with CMS. Neither the posted draft nor anything else in the public record lays out bill language or an implementation plan, and the memo does not state a DHS position or say whether the two-evaluator, different-types rule would stay.

The posted draft’s other five recommendations are broader: access to medically supervised services for people with complex behavioral and medical needs; individualized housing through the CES Waiver; exploration of Medicaid coverage and reimbursement for supportive care that families now pay for out of pocket; crisis coordination among schools, clinicians, and guardians; and changes to the task force’s membership provisions. The seventh, added August 26, asks for more Autism Waiver slots when DHS has the funding.

The legislature has directed money at the Autism Waiver queue twice. The 2025 appropriation for the Division of Developmental Disabilities Services told it to spend up to $1 million in fiscal 2026 “for the elimination of the Autism Waiver Services Program waiting list,” and Act 150 of 2026, approved May 1, renewed the direction for July 1, 2026, through June 30, 2027. Neither act says how much was spent or how many slots resulted, and the task force’s exhibits do not either.

The task force’s statute requires its written recommendations by August 31 each year, and the waiver itself grew out of a task force subcommittee’s recommendation before the state funded its first 100 slots. The panel meets again November 10, when Boyd said draft legislation would likely be presented for public comment, according to the recording. Bill pre-filing opens November 16.

AT A GLANCE

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