A diagnosing psychologist or physician can be employed inside an ordinary LLC, so ownership stays open. Two light caveats survive: untested common-law dicta and Georgia's fee-splitting and anti-referral rules. Clean: ownership stays open.
Who may give the diagnosis in Georgia
The medical-necessity diagnosis is made by a licensed physician or a licensed psychologist. A BCBA may not diagnose ASD, so the diagnostician you would bring in-house is a psychologist or a physician, and both are professions the state may treat differently from behavior analysis.
How Georgia treats psychology and medicine ownership
Georgia repealed its corporate-practice statute in 1982 and has never re-enforced the doctrine, and the LLC Act expressly permits an ordinary limited liability company to render professional services. The professional corporation is an elective form.
What bringing the diagnostician in-house does
A diagnosing psychologist or physician can be employed inside an ordinary LLC, so ownership stays open. Two light caveats survive: untested common-law dicta and Georgia's fee-splitting and anti-referral rules. Clean: ownership stays open.
How to structure it in Georgia
Because the diagnostician can be employed inside an ordinary entity, the simplest structure is a bona fide W-2 employee inside your ABA entity, which also removes the cross-entity referral that would otherwise raise the federal Anti-Kickback Statute. The framework and the alternatives are set out in the diagnostician question hub.
The corporate-practice, professional-entity, and anti-kickback rules summarized here are amended and reinterpreted, and verbatim text is a starting point rather than a conclusion. The official Georgia code, the applicable federal safe harbor, and qualified healthcare-regulatory and tax counsel are the authoritative sources.