Penguin Health
Kentucky · Kentucky Medicaid · Applied behavior analysis
Kentucky gives notes 48 hours, the fastest deadline in the country
Georgia gives providers one business day. Kentucky beats it: 907 KAR 15:010 requires notes within 48 hours of each service visit, in regulation, for behavioral health services including ABA rendered by licensed behavior analysts and their supervised staff. Section 6 also bans shortcut signatures outright: initials, typed signatures, and stamps are not accepted. The matching rule set lives in the rules library in the Penguin Health app.
From each service visit, in regulation. No stand-in needed: 48 hours maps to two calendar days exactly.
Initials, typed signatures, and stamped signatures are not accepted.
On supervised practitioners' notes, plus a monthly supervisory note.
907 KAR 15:010, behavioral-health-wide, applied to ABA.
The regulation
What Section 6 requires in the record
The rule is behavioral-health-wide rather than ABA-specific, which cuts both ways: it covers every ABA note, and it was written by people who had seen every documentation shortcut. Kentucky runs almost entirely through managed care, whose plans layer medical-necessity criteria on top of these state record rules.
- Notes are completed within 48 hours of each service visit.
- Chronological, dated, titled by the service, with the start and end time.
- Signed by the rendering practitioner with professional title. Initials, typed signatures, and stamped signatures are not accepted.
- Symptoms or behavior, the reaction to treatment and attitude, the practitioner's intervention, changes to the plan of care, and the need for continued treatment.
- Face-to-face versus telehealth indicated on the note.
- Supervised practitioners' notes co-signed within 30 days, plus a monthly supervisory note.
The checklist
What a Kentucky ABA note has to show
Each item below cites 907 KAR 15:010 Section 6 and names the Penguin rule that checks it. The 48-hour deadline converts to two calendar days exactly, so Penguin enforces it without approximation.
| The note shows | What that means in practice | Source | Rule |
|---|---|---|---|
| Completed within 48 hours | Flagged when signed more than two calendar days after the visit. | Section 6 | KY-1 |
| Dated, titled, with start and end times matching the billing | Entry form, agreeing with the claim. | Section 6 | KY-2 |
| A full signature with professional title | Initials, typed, or stamped signatures fail by name. | Section 6 | KY-3 |
| Symptoms, reaction, and attitude | The clinical picture, not activity alone. | Section 6 | KY-4 |
| Intervention, plan changes, continued-treatment need | What was done and where treatment goes next. | Section 6 | KY-5 |
| Face-to-face or telehealth indicated | Consistent with the billed place of service. | Section 6 | KY-6 |
| A co-signature on supervised notes | RBT and assistant notes carry the supervisor's signature. | Section 6 | KY-7 |
In the rules library
Seven Kentucky rules, ready to turn on
Open the rules library in the Penguin Health app, choose Kentucky Medicaid ABA, and click Add to organization. Rules your organization already has are left alone, so adding the set twice only fills gaps. After adding, edit any rule or add your own alongside them.
Each rule runs only on notes billed to Kentucky Medicaid payers. Penguin checks the CentralReach payer name, so a Kentucky rule never fires on a commercial note in the same organization, and an organization whose payer names differ edits that match after adding the set.
Penguin reads signed session notes from CentralReach, read-only, after signature and before the claim, and runs the set on every note. Deterministic rules compare record fields. AI rules are read by the AI, which returns a pass or fail with a one-sentence reason.
Seven rules for Kentucky behavioral health records applied to ABA: the 48-hour deadline, full signatures with title, clinical content, modality, and co-signatures.
- reviewed
- Oct 26, 2026
- runs on
- Notes billed to Kentucky Medicaid payers
- sources
- 907 KAR 15:010 Section 6 (effective 2020)
- watching
- The codified regulation
Every failure ships with QA guidance for that program code: an educational email, numbered action steps, and a QA email pre-filled with the date of service and a link to the note. Each reviewer action is written to a write-once audit log with seven-year retention. Billing Medicaid in more than one state? The rules library covers twenty-nine, including Indiana and Virginia.
Maintained by Penguin
We watch the KAR so the rules never go stale
Kentucky's standard lives in regulation and moves slowly; its managed care plans do not. The Kentucky set is tied to the regulation, not to a template written once.
The codified 907 KAR 15:010 text. Penguin fetches the sources on a schedule and archives every revision.
We rewrite the affected rule, cite the document that changed it, and date the review. The set shows its sources and review date in the library.
An updated rule runs in the next scheduled validation and on demand against notes you have already reviewed, so a changed requirement shows you exactly which past notes it touches.
- The current rule takes effect
Section 6's record standard: 48 hours, full signatures, clinical content, co-signatures.
LibraryKY-1 through KY-7 are built against it.
- Kentucky set reviewed
Checked against the codified regulation. Current.
- WatchingAmendments and MCO criteria
When the cabinet amends the rule or plans change their layered criteria, the set is updated and every organization using it gets the change.
State alerts
Get an email when Kentucky changes its documentation rules
We fingerprint 56 official payer documents every week, Kentucky's among them. When one changes, a person verifies what changed and writes a short plain-language summary before anything is sent. A few emails a year, not a newsletter. Unsubscribe anytime.
Check your inbox: confirm your email and you are on the list.
You will get a confirmation email first. Watching more than one state? Pick your states here.
Next step
Run a month of Kentucky notes through Penguin
Bring one month of session notes. We add the Kentucky set from the rules library, run it, show every finding beside the source it maps to, and hand your QA lead the fix for each one. Or get a demo account and click through Penguin on your own time first.