A Texas BCBA says 50 Forta BCBAs and admin staff were notified ahead of a January closeout. The virtual ABA provider has not publicly confirmed it.
Key Takeaways
- Closure reported, not yet confirmed: A LinkedIn post by BCBA Jodi Rumph says 50 Forta BCBAs and admin staff were notified, with families being informed and January as the reported end.
- A model reshaped after BACB guidance: Forta raised $55 million in 2024 for parent-led ABA; the BACB had said in 2023 that parents cannot be the RBT on record for their own children.
- Company materials still show active services: As of Nov. 3, Forta’s website listed Virtual ABA in 47 states and D.C., In-Home ABA in Houston, and a Dallas launch planned for 2027.
- Transitions are the open question: The BACB Ethics Code calls for written transition plans from the BCBAs involved; which providers will absorb Forta’s contracts and clients is undisclosed.
Forta Health, the San Francisco company that set out to make applied behavior analysis something parents could help deliver at home, is winding down its operations, according to a LinkedIn post published this week by Jodi Rumph, a Texas-based Board Certified Behavior Analyst and practice owner.
The post is short. Under the heading “End of Forta,” Rumph wrote that “50 BCBAs and admin staff got the news,” that families were being informed, and that a January closeout was the “current reported end.” She did not say how she learned of the decision or describe any role she had with the company. Acuity has not independently confirmed the closure, its timing, or the number of employees affected. Acuity requested comment from Forta.
As of Nov. 3, Forta’s website carried no notice of a wind-down. Its FAQ page continued to describe Virtual ABA “available in 47 states and Washington, D.C.,” along with In-Home ABA in Houston and a Dallas launch listed as coming in 2027. The site’s “Apply today” intake prompts remained live.
Rumph’s post spends as many words on the people Forta serves as on the company itself. “For myself it remains about the families,” she wrote, before closing with the hope that whoever takes on Forta’s contracts and care handles the transitions thoughtfully. Her LinkedIn headline reads, in full, “Owner, BCBA, ASD Parent.”
How Forta Moved From Parent-Led ABA to Virtual Care
Forta was founded in 2021 and operates under the corporate name Montera, Inc., according to its website. Its highest-profile moment came in January 2024, when it announced a $55 million Series A led by Insight Partners. Exor Ventures, Alumni Ventures, Trailmix Ventures, Tectonic Ventures, Gaingels, Asymmetric Capital Partners, Launch Bay Capital, and The House Fund also participated, as did founders of companies including 23andMe, Warby Parker, and Allbirds.
The funding announcement presented Forta as an AI healthcare company that happened to begin with autism. It described a “family-powered” ABA practice supported by clinical algorithms and research into large language models, and it said Forta had contracted with seven of the 10 largest U.S. health insurers and more than two dozen state government programs. Ritankar Das, identified at the time as Co-Founder and Chief Executive Officer, said the company was exploring how to extend its home caregiver model to memory care and other chronic conditions. Scott Barclay, a Managing Director at Insight Partners, said in the same release that a child’s zip code or a parent’s income should not determine access to proven therapy.
The model at the center of that pitch trained parents to deliver therapy to their own children. A 2024 retrospective study of Forta patients, published in JMIR Pediatrics and Parenting, describes parents completing at least 40 hours of virtual ABA training built to BACB standards and then passing an Initial Competency Assessment, two of the core requirements for Registered Behavior Technician certification.
The Behavior Analyst Certification Board had already weighed in on that arrangement. In its July 2023 newsletter, six months before Forta’s Series A, the board addressed whether a parent could serve as their own child’s RBT and concluded that “a parent cannot be the RBT on record for their child.” A parent in that role, the BACB reasoned, would effectively be employing the supervisor responsible for both the child’s treatment and the parent’s own certification, a prohibited multiple relationship. The board noted that its guidance did not apply to parents trained on their child’s plan as part of a parent-training intervention model, and said it did not wish to discourage parents from becoming RBTs.
Forta’s materials today describe a more conventional structure. Each child’s plan is designed and supervised by a BCBA, sessions are delivered by Behavior Technicians or Registered Behavior Technicians, and parents participate as active partners. The company’s parent training, its FAQ notes, “is not a certification course.”
In August 2025, Forta announced that it had expanded to 47 states, calling itself the nation’s largest virtual ABA network and saying it accepted more than 300 insurance plans, including Medicaid in all 47 states. “While competitors treat virtual care as a secondary offering, Forta was purpose-built for virtual delivery,” Das said in that announcement.
Forta’s Medicaid Footprint and Service Lines This Fall
The company’s own description of its coverage has narrowed since then. Forta’s FAQ now says it accepts Medicaid in 19 states. In Texas, the company notes, Medicaid covers only its in-home service in the Houston area, because the state’s Medicaid program does not currently cover telehealth ABA delivered by a behavior technician.
That distinction may shape how a closure plays out. Forta has run two service lines with different clinical and payer arrangements: a national virtual practice and an in-home program in a single Texas metro. Rumph’s post does not specify whether both are ending.
Open Questions About Forta’s Workforce, Families, and Contracts
Several basic facts remain unconfirmed. The figure of 50 BCBAs and administrative staff is Rumph’s, and Forta has not said whether it represents the company’s full workforce or one part of it, or how many behavior technicians are affected. The company has not disclosed how many families are in active treatment or in which states. Nor is it clear whether any portion of the business is being sold, or whether the January date marks a final day of services or a broader wind-down of operations.
The closing line of Rumph’s post (“May those who absorb the contracts and care do thoughtful and intelligent transitions”) suggests that other providers are expected to take on at least some of Forta’s payer relationships and clients. She did not name any organizations, and Acuity has not identified any.
What the BACB Ethics Code Requires During a Provider Closure
Whatever the company’s plans, the formal obligations to clients rest largely with individual clinicians. The BACB’s Ethics Code for Behavior Analysts applies to BCBAs and BCaBAs, and the board states plainly that it does not have separate jurisdiction over organizations or corporations.
Three standards speak directly to a closure. Standard 3.14 requires behavior analysts to act in clients’ best interests to avoid interruption or disruption of services, and names funding disruption among the unplanned interruptions they must plan for. Standard 3.15 lists the end of funding among the circumstances in which discontinuing services is appropriate, and requires a written plan for doing so. Standard 3.16 governs transfers to another behavior analyst, inside or outside the organization, and calls for a written plan with target dates, transition activities, and responsible parties, along with collaboration with the receiving provider to minimize disruption. A parallel pair of standards, 4.11 and 4.12, covers continuity and termination of supervision, which bears on behavior technicians whose certification depends on an active supervisor.
For families, the path forward resembles the one that led them to Forta. The company’s own intake process, as outlined on its website, runs through insurance verification, prior authorization, a clinical assessment by a BCBA, and a new treatment plan before therapy begins. A family moving to another provider can expect to repeat some version of those steps, on a timeline set by the receiving provider’s capacity and the payer’s authorization rules. Families who relied on telehealth may also find fewer options than they had at Forta, depending on how their state and health plan treat virtual ABA, as the company’s own Texas Medicaid caveat illustrates.
Forta’s 2024 funding announcement opened on the problem of families waiting too long for care. Whether its current clients move directly to providers absorbing its contracts, or return to the waitlists the company was built to bypass, is among the questions Acuity has put to Forta.
