RTM CPT Codes Explained: 98975, 98977, 98980 & 98981

What are the RTM CPT codes?

Remote Therapeutic Monitoring is billed through a family of CPT codes that joined the Medicare Physician Fee Schedule in January 2022. For a therapy clinic they break into three jobs — setup, device supply (the monitoring platform), and clinician treatment management time — plus two rescue codes, added in 2026, that keep partial months billable.

For a PT, OT, or SLP clinic running home exercise programs, the working set is 98975 + 98977 + 98980, with 98981 available in heavier review months and the rescue codes as fallbacks. If you’re new to RTM entirely, start with our complete guide to Remote Therapeutic Monitoring — this article goes deep on the codes specifically.

How much does each RTM code pay?

At 2026 national CMS fee-schedule rates, the three core codes pay $21.71 (98975, one-time), $40.08 (98977, monthly), and $54.11 (98980, monthly). That puts a fully qualifying RTM patient at about $94.19 per month in recurring reimbursement, plus the one-time setup fee in month one.

Two important caveats:

• These are national averages. Actual payment varies by geographic locality, and commercial and Medicaid rates differ from Medicare. Always confirm against the CMS Physician Fee Schedule search tool for your region.
• Rates are updated annually in the PFS final rule, so numbers drift year to year.

At 20 active RTM patients, roughly $94/month each is about $1,880/month — for follow-up work most clinics already do informally. The RTM guide’s estimator lets you model your own volume.

Which RTM codes can be billed together?

In a typical month, an active patient supports 98977 and 98980 together — they measure different things (patient data days vs. clinician review minutes) and are designed to pair. In the first month of monitoring, 98975 joins them as a one-time addition.

The rules worth memorizing:

• 98975 is once per episode of care, not per month. Re-billing it requires a genuinely new episode.
• Only one practitioner can bill the device-supply code for a patient in each 30-day period — coordinate if the patient sees multiple providers.
• 98981 stacks on 98980 only in full 20-minute increments — never on 98979. Nineteen extra minutes rounds down to zero extra units.
• 98979 and 98980 are mutually exclusive in the same calendar month: bill the 10-minute code or the 20-minute code, not both.
• The same practitioner cannot bill RTM and RPM for the same patient concurrently — pick the program that fits the care.

What does each core code require?

98975 — setup and education

This covers onboarding: showing the patient (or, in pediatrics, the parent) how the monitoring works and how to log. It’s billed once monitoring is actually underway — the episode needs to reach at least 16 days of monitoring, which makes day 17 the earliest it can go on a claim. In practice, the setup conversation fits inside a normal intake or follow-up visit.

98977 — device supply

Despite the name, “device” doesn’t mean hardware you ship. Software that meets the FDA’s definition of a medical device — including an app the family uses on their own phone — qualifies. The requirement that matters is behavioral: the patient must record or transmit data on 16 or more separate days within the 30-day period. Multiple logs on the same calendar day still count as one day.

One detail worth knowing, straight from APTA’s practice advisory: a log reporting a missed session still counts as a day of transmission. Data showing a lack of engagement is still data — so teach families to log the days that didn’t go well, not just the wins. It protects the day count and tells the clinician exactly where to intervene.

98980 and 98981 — treatment management

These pay for clinician work: reviewing incoming adherence data, sending feedback, adjusting the program, and communicating with the family. 98980 requires at least 20 minutes in the calendar month plus at least one interactive, real-time communication (phone or video — a portal message doesn’t qualify). Every additional full 20 minutes is one unit of 98981.

98985 and 98979 — the rescue codes

Before 2026, RTM was all-or-nothing: 15 days of logging or 19 minutes of review paid $0. The 2026 fee schedule fixed that. 98985 covers device supply when the patient transmits data on 2–15 days in the 30-day period, and 98979 covers treatment management when the month lands at 10–19 minutes of clinician time — with the same live-communication requirement. If the patient clears the full thresholds, bill 98977 and 98980 instead; the rescue codes exist for the months that fall short.

On payment: the 10-minute management code pays roughly half of 98980, but 98985 is valued at parity with 98977 on the 2026 fee schedule — a partial-logging month doesn’t shrink the device-supply payment. Payer adoption of new codes varies, so verify coverage and your locality’s rates before building them into projections.

How do the codes fit into a monthly rhythm?

RTM billing follows the care loop, not the other way around:

1. Month 1: consent and onboarding (98975), the family starts logging, the clinician reviews and gives feedback. If thresholds are met, bill 98975 + 98977 + 98980.
2. Every month after: the family keeps logging (98977), the clinician keeps reviewing and communicating (98980, sometimes 98981). Bill the pair when thresholds are met.
3. Discharge: monitoring ends with the episode of care.

The clinics that make this sustainable are the ones that don’t track any of it by hand — qualifying days and review minutes are counted automatically, and the claim is assembled from a report rather than a spreadsheet. That’s exactly the job SuloMotion was built for in pediatric clinics.

What are the most common RTM billing mistakes?

The denials we hear about almost always trace back to one of five errors:

• Billing 98977 in a month where the patient logged fewer than 16 days — at 2–15 days, the rescue code 98985 applies instead.
• Billing 98980 with 20 minutes of review but no interactive communication.
• Omitting the therapy modifier (GP for PT, GO for OT, GN for SLP).
• Two providers billing device supply for the same patient in the same period.
• Counting general documentation time toward the 20 minutes when it isn’t RTM data review or patient communication.

Each of these is preventable with threshold tracking and a clean audit trail — which is a systems problem, not a clinical one.