Thrive Autism Solutions Opening In Bentonville

A noted behavioral health expert is planning to open an autism services clinic in Bentonville.

Dr. Raelynn Hillhouse will open Thrive Autism Solutions in September, she said.

Hillhouse is still searching for a location to lease about 3,000 SF. The clinic will offer outpatient services, and will start out with a limited number of clients initially to hone operating systems and assure quality of service.

TAS will begin with a dozen staff members, but Hillhouse said over the next three years, the clinic could bring 150 jobs to Northwest Arkansas.

She said startup costs for the clinic are between $500,000 and $1 million.

“We’re starting lean and planning an aggressive ramp-up,” she said. “Our vision is to have a place for parents and families to turn to. There is no national brand to turn to.”

Services will include intensive applied behavior analysis, the only behavioral treatment for autism endorsed by the surgeon general and the National Institutes of Health.

Although accreditation is not required, Hillhouse is designing the clinic to achieve national accreditation within 12 months. She hopes to develop the Bentonville clinic as a prototype, and then expand the TAS brand throughout the region.

Hillhouse, a southwest Missouri native, was CEO of Hawaii’s largest provider of autism behavioral services, an $18 million organization with a staff of more than 500.

A 2012 report by the London School of Economics put the cost of autism-associated expenses in the United States at $126 billion per year, more than triple the amount spent in 2006.

The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention estimates one in 88 children have autism.

A special education report authored by the Arkansas Department of Education in February said the school districts in the Fayetteville-Rogers-Springdale metro area have 924 children with autism.

There were 88 children, according to the report, with autism in the entire state in 1993.