LumaLegend Jill Umstattd: From Autism Therapy Specialist/Behavior Therapist to ABA Software Advocate
As an Applied Behavior Analysis (ABA) industry expert, Jill Umstattd has worked in the field for over 20 years, helping countless individuals and ABA agencies along the way.
After taking ABA classes, Jill’s interest in helping those with ASD sparked, but it wasn’t until a parent of one of the children she was supporting said, “If it weren’t for you, I wouldn’t know what my son’s voice sounds like”. From that moment on, Jill knew that ABA was her life calling. Now as a mother of two, she finds immense meaning in helping those with Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD).
Jill started out as a Behavior Therapist and worked up to a BCaBA, and eventually a BCBA. This allowed her to be an integral part of the journey of so many children’s lives. ABA services were either private pay or completely out of pocket during this time, and getting access to care for many families was almost impossible. This unfortunately resulted in many families having to forgo any sort of therapy.
As awareness and acceptance around Autism increased so did the need for better software solutions. During her time as a supervisor, she had the opportunity to be involved in the initial creation of an electronic system to help facilitate care driving her passion for healthcare technology.
Jill conveyed the importance of using technology, ”We were able to create the ability for parents and therapists to record information electronically and quickly share it with us as supervisors. This opened up the opportunity to monitor the client’s progress between in-person supervisions and help make parents active participants.”
Having parents as active participants had a profound effect on the success of outcome-based care.
Jill explained, “As insurances then began to cover services, billing became a whole lot more complicated and ABA providers were forced to juggle multiple areas of their practice. The job was becoming more challenging and complex, we had to ensure we met the requirements of the various funding sources for assessments, authorizations, and documentation so that services could be reimbursed.”
Jill’s main focus was to ensure more individuals could gain access to the care they needed and wanted to find ways to make administrative tasks simpler and more efficient. Jill knew that by cutting down the time spent on administrative tasks, ABA providers could spend more time doing what they love – delivering quality care.
“Things need to get easier, processes need to improve, and time spent completing administrative tasks needs to decrease,” expressed Jill.
Making a move to new software or embarking on a digital transformation journey can put a strain on the whole business, including all of the employees trying to learn and do their job. While going digital sounds like an easy answer, we understand the challenges many providers face when looking for the right tool, tackling implementation alone and developing staff training programs, as well as choosing the right team members to oversee the new software.
At Lumary, we believe that better wellbeing is possible through technology and a strong tech partnership. That is why we set out to create a purpose-built solution to enable autism therapists to deliver the best possible care. Working closely with BCBAs and implementing feedback from ABA agencies across the country, we designed one solution. As a data-driven field, ABA software needs to efficiently provide the data required to make decisions –and that’s what Lumary does. Our software is built on Salesforce, the world’s #1 CRM platform where the possibilities for storing and reporting on business data are endless.
Lumary’s software is intuitive, so clinicians and administrators can quickly pick up and start using the system without lengthy implementations and set-up time. As a tech partner, not just a provider, our tech experts and experienced system architects work with you in consultation, ensuring your system workflows meet the exact needs for the field, with configurability to support your organization.