ABA Medicaid rates in South Dakota rank among the strongest in the country on both technician and analyst time. South Dakota Medicaid pays $86.92 an hour for code 97153, one-on-one ABA delivered by a technician, 6th of 42 states and 37.0% above the national median of $63.44. For analyst treatment on 97155 it pays $156.00 an hour, 5th of 41 states and one of the five highest rates in the country.
The current rates took effect July 1, 2026, continuing a pattern of regular inflationary increases. They are compiled from official South Dakota Medicaid publications, and each rate links to its source document.
South Dakota publishes 97153 at $21.73 per 15-minute unit with no modifier, or $86.92 an hour. Only five states pay more: Alaska at $127.80, Georgia at $123.64, Iowa at $114.36, the District of Columbia at $110.00 and Virginia at $93.92. At the other end, New York pays $38.52 and Louisiana $40.00.
For an agency, 97153 is the code that carries the business. Direct one-on-one treatment by a registered behavior technician makes up the bulk of authorized hours in a typical treatment plan, so a few dollars on this line move annual revenue far more than the same change on an assessment code. A South Dakota rate that sits well above the median means the core of the service is funded at a level most states do not reach.
Technician assessment support (97152) pays the same $86.92 an hour, 10th of 29 states. Paying the two technician codes identically keeps billing simple: an hour of technician time is worth the same whether the technician is helping with an assessment or delivering treatment.
| Code | Service | SD per hour | Rank | vs national median |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 97155 | Treatment with plan changes by an analyst | $156.00 | 5 of 41 | +54.4% |
| 97151 | Assessment by an analyst | $142.52 | 16 of 41 | +22.3% |
| 97156 | Parent and caregiver training | $89.76 | 25 of 43 | -5.3% |
| 97158 | Group ABA led by an analyst | $52.04 | 6 of 30 | +39.5% |
| 97154 | Group ABA led by a technician | $21.76 | 26 of 37 | -27.4% |
At $39.00 per unit, 97155 places South Dakota on the national list of top-paying states, behind Vermont at $197.40, Alaska at $167.88, Georgia at $160.56 and Virginia at $157.60. The assessment (97151) pays $35.63 per unit, or $142.52 an hour, also well above the national median.
The practical effect is that supervision and plan modification, which many states fund thinly, are a revenue line in South Dakota rather than overhead. When a BCBA directs a session and adjusts the protocol, that time is billable at one of the best rates in the country, which makes it easier to staff supervision at the ratios a quality program needs.
Every South Dakota ABA code is billed in 15-minute units with no modifier on the current schedule, and the hourly figures on this page are simply four units. That is the most common structure nationally, but not the only one, so the hourly view is what makes South Dakota comparable with states that bill per session or per hour.
Technician codes
Two codes are billed for technician time: 97153 for one-on-one treatment and 97152 for assessment support, plus 97154 when a technician runs a group. All three are tied to the behavior technician provider level.
Analyst codes
Four codes belong to the behavior analyst: 97151 for assessment, 97155 for treatment with protocol modification, 97156 for caregiver training and 97158 for analyst-led groups. The analyst codes pay more because they carry clinical judgment and plan design, and South Dakota's spread between the two tiers is wide.
What makes South Dakota's technician rate especially strong is the wage level. Federal data for May 2025 puts the state's median wage for the closest comparable technician occupation at $18.44 an hour, against $22.08 nationally. That wage is only 30.2% of the 97153 rate, leaving a margin of $60.71 an hour after a loaded wage.
South Dakota's analyst proxy wage is $25.79 an hour, against $28.53 nationally. Margins after a loaded wage are wide:
- 97155: wage share 23.5%, margin $119.34 an hour.
- 97151: wage share 25.7%, margin $105.86 an hour.
- 97156: wage share 40.8%, margin $53.10 an hour.
Both wage figures use proxy occupations and are floors rather than market pay for credentialed BCBAs and registered technicians. The margin is what remains before supervision, scheduling, cancellations, travel, documentation time, billing staff and rent, so it is a ceiling on profit, not profit itself. Still, a rate that is more than three times the local technician wage gives a South Dakota agency room to pay above the proxy wage, fund training and absorb rural travel without losing money on each hour.
Two codes sit below the national median. Caregiver training (97156) pays $22.44 per unit, or $89.76 an hour, 25th of 43, and it still carries a July 1, 2025 effective date while every other ABA code moved to July 1, 2026. Technician-led groups (97154) pay $5.44 per unit, or $21.76 an hour, 27.4% below the national median of $29.96.
Caregiver training matters more than its rank suggests. Treatment plans increasingly build in parent sessions so skills carry over at home, and the code is billed by the analyst, whose time is the scarcest resource an agency has. An analyst hour spent on 97156 earns well under an analyst hour on 97155, so agencies tend to schedule caregiver sessions carefully and pair them with supervision where the plan allows.
Analyst-led groups (97158) are the opposite: $13.01 per unit, or $52.04 an hour, 6th of 30 states. A South Dakota agency running social-skills groups gets substantially more when a BCBA leads them.
South Dakota has a recorded history of annual ABA increases:
- July 1, 2022: Applied Behavior Analysis inflationary increase implemented (Tracking Log entry 132).
- July 1, 2023: inflationary increase implemented (Tracking Log entry 80).
- July 1, 2024: inflationary increase implemented (Tracking Log entry 29).
The current rates carry a July 1, 2026 effective date, so July 1 is the date to watch each year. The pattern lines up with the state fiscal year: the current schedule appears in the state's SFY2027 releases. Caregiver training is the code most worth watching at the next update, since it is the one line that did not move in July 2026.
Agencies budgeting multi-year contracts in South Dakota should check each July schedule rather than assume a fixed increase, since no percentage is published with these entries.
The South Dakota schedule attaches one prior authorization rule to each ABA code from 97151 through 97158, and no code has a published unit limit. In practice that means every ABA service needs an approved authorization before it is billed, but the number of units is set by the authorization itself rather than a hard cap on the schedule.
For operations, the absence of a fixed unit limit puts the weight on documentation. The assessment on 97151 and the treatment plan it produces are what support the hours requested, so an agency's authorization success depends on clear goals, measurable baselines and progress data at each reauthorization. Tracking authorized units against delivered units by client and by code is the simplest way to avoid delivering hours that cannot be billed.
ABA in South Dakota is paid through South Dakota Medicaid on a fee-for-service basis, administered by the DSS Division of Medical Services, so the published schedule is the payment rate. There is no separate health-plan contract to negotiate and no plan-specific rate to reconcile.
The state's managed-care arrangements are limited to primary care case management and designated-provider programs, such as PRIME primary care providers, Care Connect health homes, BabyReady providers and a dental vendor. Our data counts 4 plans and program arrangements in the state; none of them sets ABA rates. See the South Dakota managed care page for how they are organized.
For an agency, that simplicity is an advantage. Revenue forecasts rest on one schedule, one set of authorization rules and one payer, and a rate change on July 1 reaches every Medicaid client at the same time.
Nationally, South Dakota sits just behind the top five on technician pay and inside the top five on analyst treatment. Few states pair strong technician and strong analyst rates; many pay well on one tier and thinly on the other.
Against the leaders
Alaska and Georgia lead on both technician and analyst time, and Virginia appears in the top five on both as well. See ABA Medicaid rates in Virginia for a state with a similar profile. Vermont pays the most for 97155 at $197.40, well above South Dakota's analyst rate. Utah also ranks near South Dakota on analyst treatment; see Utah ABA rates.
Against the low end
At the bottom, Louisiana pays $27.00 an hour for 97155 and North Dakota pays $43.24 an hour for 97153. The North Dakota ABA rates page shows a neighbor with a very different balance between technician and analyst pay, which matters for agencies weighing a location near the state line.
The South Dakota ABA schedule is most useful when it is turned into a per-client model rather than read code by code.
- Build the weekly mix. Multiply each client's authorized hours by code: mostly 97153, a share of 97155 supervision, periodic 97156 sessions and an assessment on 97151 at intake and reauthorization.
- Weight the margin by code. Because caregiver training earns far less per analyst hour than 97155, the mix of analyst codes changes the blended margin more than the technician rate does.
- Plan around July 1. Treat the July schedule as the annual pricing event and refresh budgets then.
- Benchmark commercial contracts. A Medicaid rate this far above the median is a useful reference point when discussing rates with other payers.
All 41,546 current South Dakota Medicaid rates, including the full ABA history, are available with a subscription; see pricing.
Rates are compiled from official South Dakota Medicaid publications, chiefly the South Dakota Medicaid fee schedules released for SFY2027, and each rate links to its source document. Rates published per 15-minute unit are converted to hourly figures by multiplying by four, and rankings compare the same service at the same provider level across states. Wage figures come from federal occupational data for May 2025 using the closest comparable occupations. For the full approach, see our methodology; for the national picture, see ABA Medicaid rates by state; and for every South Dakota code, the South Dakota Medicaid rates hub.