New Mexico added 46 behavioral health providers in the latest CMS NPI registry weekly update, representing 1% of the national total. The state registered a total of 139 providers this week, indicating a steady, rather than explosive, expansion of the behavioral health workforce in the state compared to larger markets.
ABA Workforce Composition
Within the applied behavior analysis (ABA) sector, the data shows 5 BCBA credentials and 34 RBT credentials. It is important to note that these figures are not mutually exclusive, as 2 individuals hold both BCBA and RBT credentials, often reflecting career progression. The resulting ratio of nearly seven RBTs for every BCBA (6.8:1) suggests a high demand for direct service providers relative to the supervisory capacity, which could lead to challenges in ensuring adequate supervision for RBTs and potentially impact service access.
Provider Demographics
Of the 120 individual providers, 72% are female, 24% are male, and 4% identify as nonbinary, a gender distribution consistent with broader trends in the behavioral health field. No specific organizations appeared multiple times in this week's update, suggesting a diverse landscape of smaller practices or individual practitioners rather than dominant multi-state employers.
This data points to a growing but potentially supervision-constrained ABA workforce in New Mexico, where expanding BCBA capacity will be crucial for sustainable service delivery and improved access to care.
