Resources · From the Sulo team
The Brief.
Bottom-line answers on RTM billing, home programs, and pediatric therapy operations. No teasers, no filler — every article starts with the answer.
Auditing RTM: Bulletproofing Your Clinic's Data Tracking
What a Medicare records request asks an RTM program to prove, why month-end reconstruction fails, and how to build a claim file that survives review.
The bottom line
An RTM audit starts as a letter — an Additional Documentation Request — and you get 45 calendar days to answer it (30 if it comes from a UPIC). What it asks you to prove is narrow and mechanical: that the plan of care was current, that qualifying days fell inside the right 30-day window, that review minutes were real and reviewed by someone allowed to review them, and that a live interactive communication happened. The failure mode isn't clinical judgment — it's reconstruction. CMS expects services to be documented when they're rendered, so a spreadsheet assembled on the 30th is a delayed entry, and it has to be labeled as one. Contemporaneous, timestamped counting is the whole defense.
Read the full brief →The 3-Minute HEP Workflow: Eliminating After-Hours Charting
Home exercise programs end up in your evening because building one means leaving the clinical tool you're in — screenshotting PDFs, retyping instructions, assembling a document the family may never open. The fix is structural, not motivational: start from a pediatric library instead of a blank page, dictate the changes instead of typing them, and send it before the family leaves. One billing caveat worth knowing up front — the time you save in the room is visit time, not RTM treatment-management time, and counting it twice is a denial waiting to happen.
How to Start an RTM Program in Your Pediatric Clinic
Launching RTM is a focused week of setup, not a six-month project: verify payer coverage, choose a monitoring platform, write consent into intake, enroll patients who already have home programs, build a monthly review habit, and bill three codes — 98975, 98977, and 98980, worth $105.55 per patient per month on the recurring pair at 2026 national rates. Budget one conversation more than you expect: RTM carries patient cost sharing — 20% under Medicare, little or none for most Medicaid children, highly variable commercially — and families should hear that number at consent. Most pediatric clinics can enroll their first patients within days of deciding.
CMS's 2027 RTM Proposals: What Therapy Clinics Need to Know
Nothing about your 2026 billing changes today — these are proposals, and the comment period closes September 14, 2026. But they are substantial: CMS wants RTM limited to established patients, wants a separately billable face-to-face initiating visit before monitoring starts, wants to end outsourcing RTM to third-party companies, and believes the setup and device-supply codes are overvalued. The conversion factor is proposed to fall 1.68% on top of that. Separately, CMS is asking whether to collapse all 17 remote-monitoring codes into four G-codes — a change that would undo the partial-month billing therapy clinics just gained in 2026.
The New 2026 RTM Rules: Billing 2–15 Days (98985) & 10–19 Minutes
Since January 2026, a partial RTM month is no longer a $0 month. CPT 98985 covers device supply when a patient logs only 2–15 days in the 30-day period — valued at exact parity with 98977, both at $51.44 — and CPT 98979 covers treatment management at 10–19 minutes, at roughly half of 98980. The classic 16-day and 20-minute thresholds still decide which code you bill, but they are no longer a cliff.
Can PTs, OTs, and SLPs Bill RTM? Yes — Here's How
Yes. RTM was deliberately designed so physical therapists, occupational therapists, and speech-language pathologists can bill it directly — no physician involvement required. PTs and OTs bill the full stack: CPT 98975, 98977, 98980, and 98981 under a therapy plan of care with the GP or GO modifier, worth $105.55 per patient per month on the recurring pair. SLPs bill RTM too (GN modifier), but anchor on 98975 and the treatment-management codes — no device-supply code covers speech, language, or swallowing monitoring. One catch: Medicare won't pay RTM to both PT and OT for the same beneficiary.
RTM vs RPM: The Difference for Therapy Clinics
RTM (Remote Therapeutic Monitoring) reimburses for monitoring non-physiological data — exercise adherence, pain, function — and PTs, OTs, and SLPs can bill it directly. RPM (Remote Patient Monitoring) covers physiological vitals like heart rate and blood pressure and is billed by physicians and other providers with E/M billing rights. For a therapy clinic, RTM is almost always the right program.
RTM CPT Codes Explained: 98975, 98977, 98980 & 98981
Three CPT codes do most of RTM's work for therapy clinics: 98975 (one-time setup, $21.71), 98977 (device supply per 30-day period, $51.44, requires 16+ days of patient data), and 98980 (monthly treatment management, $54.11, requires 20+ minutes of clinician time). A typical active RTM patient generates about $105.55 per month at 2026 national CMS rates — and new 2026 rescue codes (98985 and 98979) keep partial months billable when a patient falls short.
What is Remote Therapeutic Monitoring?
The complete guide — what RTM is, the CPT codes, the monthly workflow, and a live reimbursement estimator for your clinic's volume.
Read the guide →Beyond the reading
See RTM working in a pediatric clinic like yours
A 15-minute walkthrough of home programs, adherence tracking, and audit-ready RTM billing — no hardware required.