ABA Medicaid rates in Oklahoma favor the technician hour. Oklahoma SoonerCare pays $69.40 an hour for code 97153, one-on-one ABA delivered by a technician, which ranks 17th of 42 states and is 9.4% above the national median of $63.44. The analyst codes tell a different story: Oklahoma pays a single rate of $94.20 an hour for assessment, treatment with protocol changes and caregiver training, which lands at or below the national median on each.
All current Oklahoma ABA rates took effect January 1, 2024. They are compiled from official SoonerCare publications from the Oklahoma Health Care Authority, and each rate links to its source document on the Oklahoma Medicaid rates hub.
SoonerCare publishes 97153 at $17.35 per 15-minute unit with no modifier. At $69.40 an hour, Oklahoma sits above the national median and well clear of the lowest states, New York at $38.52 and Louisiana at $40.00. It is still far below the top of the market: Alaska pays $127.80, Georgia $123.64 and Iowa $114.36.
The technician hour is usually the largest share of an ABA agency's billed time, so this is the line that determines whether a SoonerCare caseload is viable. In Oklahoma, it is the strongest code relative to the national picture.
The combination that matters is rate against wage. Oklahoma's technician rate is above the national median, while its technician wage proxy sits well below the national figure. That leaves a comfortable margin on each technician hour, enough to fund the work around the session that never appears on a claim: supervision meetings, travel between homes, documentation, training and authorization paperwork.
Agencies can use that margin to pay technicians above the local market, which helps with recruiting and keeping RBTs. In a field where turnover is costly, because every new hire brings unbilled training time, that is often the best investment a program can make.
The constraint is the weekly limit on 97153. A strong rate cannot be multiplied by unlimited hours: each child's technician time is capped by the authorization. Revenue growth therefore comes from serving more children well, not from adding hours to existing cases, and from delivering the hours that are authorized rather than losing them to cancellations.
Oklahoma pays one flat rate, $23.55 per 15 minutes, across the three analyst codes on its schedule. The rank depends on each code's national median:
| Code | Service | Oklahoma per hour | Rank | vs national median |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 97153 | One-on-one ABA by a technician | $69.40 | 17 of 42 | +9.4% |
| 97156 | Parent and caregiver training | $94.20 | 23 of 43 | -0.6% |
| 97155 | Treatment with plan changes by an analyst | $94.20 | 26 of 41 | -6.8% |
| 97151 | Assessment by an analyst | $94.20 | 32 of 41 | -19.2% |
Caregiver training (97156) is effectively at the national median of $94.80. Analyst treatment (97155) is a little below the national median of $101.04. The assessment (97151) is furthest behind, since the national median for assessments is $116.56 and states such as New Mexico ($450.60), Vermont ($263.20) and Minnesota ($200.44) pay far more.
The result is a narrow ladder between technician and analyst pay. The analyst rate is higher than the technician rate, but by less than the national medians would suggest. Oklahoma is not ranked on technician assessment support (97152) or on either group code.
A flat analyst rate has a practical advantage: an analyst's hour earns the same whether it is spent on treatment direction, caregiver coaching or assessment. Treatment plans can therefore be built around clinical need, without billing pulling analyst time toward one service or away from another.
It also has a cost. Assessment is usually the most intensive analyst work, and in many states it pays a premium. In Oklahoma, it does not, which means initial assessments and reassessments should be run efficiently, with standard templates and well-prepared data collection, so that the time they take stays predictable.
Caregiver training is the code where Oklahoma comes closest to the national median. Programs that build regular caregiver sessions into treatment, as most clinical guidance recommends, are paid at a fair national rate for doing so.
Oklahoma is not ranked on technician assessment support (97152), technician-led groups (97154) or analyst-led groups (97158). Agencies that use those services in other states should confirm with SoonerCare how that work is expected to be billed before importing a service model.
In practice, this means building an Oklahoma program around the four codes the state publishes: technician therapy, analyst treatment, caregiver training and assessment. Group programming and technician-supported assessment may still have a clinical role, but they should not be assumed to generate separate revenue until billing guidance confirms it.
Oklahoma's wage picture works in agencies' favor on the technician side. Federal data for May 2025 puts the median wage for the closest comparable technician occupation at $17.66 an hour in Oklahoma, well below the national $22.08. The analyst proxy is $28.53, the same as the national figure. Both figures use proxy occupations and are floors rather than market pay for credentialed RBTs and BCBAs.
- 97153 technician hour: the wage is 36.2% of the $69.40 rate, leaving a margin of $44.30 an hour after a loaded wage.
- 97151, 97155 and 97156 analyst hours: the wage is 43.0% of the $94.20 rate, leaving $53.65 an hour.
Those two margins are close together. An hour of BCBA time earns only modestly more margin than an hour of technician time, so the Oklahoma rate structure supports a technician-heavy model with analyst time focused on what the treatment plan requires. Agencies that pay credentialed analysts well above the proxy wage will find the analyst margin shrinks quickly.
Oklahoma's schedule spells out its ABA utilization controls code by code:
- 97153 carries two prior authorization rules and a weekly limit. Treatment plans should be built around the authorized weekly hours.
- 97151 carries two prior authorization rules and is limited by reassessment, so assessments are tied to the reassessment cycle rather than billed freely.
- 97155 and 97156 each carry two prior authorization rules, with no published limit.
For intake teams, the weekly limit on 97153 is the one that most shapes scheduling: an authorization written for a set number of weekly hours caps technician revenue per case regardless of the clinical recommendation. Because the limit is weekly rather than daily, missed hours early in a week can sometimes be made up later in the same week, but not carried into the next. Scheduling systems should track each child's remaining weekly hours in real time.
Oklahoma pays Medicaid services through SoonerCare fee-for-service and through SoonerSelect, the state's risk-based managed-care program for medical services. For ABA, the state's rule is that plans must pay at least the published rate; behavioral health follows the same rule. The SoonerCare schedule is therefore the floor for SoonerSelect contracts: a plan may pay more but not less. Five plans are on file. See Oklahoma managed care rules.
The floor is set in statute. An amendment to 56 O.S. 4002.12 (HB 3650), effective November 1, 2026, extends the SoonerSelect minimum-rate floor to July 1, 2028. For ABA agencies, that gives the published schedule protection as a minimum for the next several budget years, and makes it the starting point for any negotiation with a plan.
Oklahoma is an above-median state for technician time and a below-median state for analyst time. Compared with a state such as Virginia, which pays $93.92 for 97153 and $157.60 for 97155, Oklahoma pays less on both, but the gap is much larger on the analyst side. Against Louisiana, which sits at the bottom on nearly every ABA code, Oklahoma pays far more across the board.
Regionally, Oklahoma's $17.35 technician unit is the highest among its neighbors, above Arkansas ($15.00), Texas ($14.50) and Louisiana ($10.00). For an operator in the West South Central states, Oklahoma is the strongest technician market in the region.
Start with the authorized weekly technician hours per child, since the weekly limit on 97153 caps the largest revenue line. Add analyst hours for treatment direction, caregiver training and reassessment at the single analyst rate.
Then model delivered hours rather than authorized hours, and test the budget at a lower delivery rate. Use local wages for credentialed staff, not the federal proxies, which are floors. For SoonerSelect contracts, start negotiations at the published floor. Ask each plan how its contract will treat a future change to the SoonerCare schedule, and whether it pays separately for any service the state schedule does not price.
Finally, plan for the analyst side deliberately. Because one analyst rate covers three codes, analyst revenue depends on the number of analyst hours a program can staff and authorize, not on which service fills them. Recruiting and keeping BCBAs is therefore the main limit on growth, and the technician margin is what funds supervision while the analyst caseload builds. The national ABA rates hub compares every state, and the Oklahoma hub covers all 29,954 current Oklahoma Medicaid rates.
Rates on this page are compiled from official SoonerCare publications from the Oklahoma Health Care Authority. Each rate in the full dataset links to its source document and effective date, with Oklahoma history back to 2010. Our methodology explains how 15-minute units are converted to hourly rates and ranked. Pricing covers access to the complete Oklahoma dataset and its earlier editions.