Day-to-Day Operations at a Physical Clinic

Your intake, assessment, and treatment-planning fundamentals don’t change — but the physical mechanics of a session do.

• Intake stays mostly the same — referral, intake call, insurance verification, assessment, treatment plan, scheduling. Update your intake materials to reflect the new address and what a first in-person visit looks like.

• Build and own a room-rotation schedule. Decide whether kids are on-site full days, half days, and if they will rotate between rooms. If kids move between rooms and activities instead of staying put, someone needs to hold the master schedule (i.e., which child is where, at what time, with which staff member). Confirm if the physical space allows for rotations, which will require planning and logistics around scheduling.

• Cover staff breaks, don't just schedule them. Lunches and breaks need a coverage plan, not just a time slot.

• Have a call-out plan. Define who's on call to cover a room when a staff member calls out same-day, and at what point a session gets rescheduled instead of covered.

• Have a sick-child plan. Define what happens to that session (e.g., cancelled, backfilled as a make-up, or the room re-staffed for the kids still present), and what happens to the RBT scheduled for that session: do they still get paid the full rate? Or a lower rate?

• Build physical-space safety plans. How staff respond to challenging behaviors (aggression, self-injury, elopement) needs a documented plan specific to your building’s layout — exits, quiet rooms, staff response roles.

• Rebuild your BCBA’s daily rhythm around physical rounds — walking room to room for supervision check-ins, alongside any remaining telehealth caseload.