A pediatrician diagnostician flips ownership through the medicine doctrine; a psychologist can be employed in an ordinary LLC. Nuanced: the psychologist is the clean path, the physician is not.
Who may give the diagnosis in Maryland
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 Maryland treats psychology and medicine ownership
Maryland's doctrine bars a non-licensee entity from employing a physician, and a corporation may render professional services only through licensed individuals. But the Maryland LLC Act expressly permits an ordinary limited liability company to render professional services without an ownership restriction and even allows a multi-disciplinary LLC (Md. Corps. & Assns. § 4A-203.1), which opens the psychology path. Maryland does not recognize the PLLC.
What bringing the diagnostician in-house does
A pediatrician diagnostician flips ownership through the medicine doctrine; a psychologist can be employed in an ordinary LLC. Nuanced: the psychologist is the clean path, the physician is not.
How to structure it in Maryland
Use a psychologist as the diagnostician and you can employ them in an ordinary entity; use a physician and you are pushed to a separate licensee-owned diagnostic entity connected through a management company. Choose the psychologist. The framework and both structures 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 Maryland code, the applicable federal safe harbor, and qualified healthcare-regulatory and tax counsel are the authoritative sources.