What Is RTM Health? Remote Therapeutic Monitoring Explained

Most of a patient’s recovery happens between office visits, out of sight of the care team. Medicare began paying clinics to watch that space in 2022, when CMS introduced the first Remote Therapeutic Monitoring (RTM) billing codes, and the program has grown every year since. This explainer covers what RTM is, the information it tracks, how a program runs day to day, who can bill for it, and what changed in the 2026 code set.

What is Remote Therapeutic Monitoring (RTM)?

Remote Therapeutic Monitoring lets providers bill for tracking patient-reported, non-physiological data between visits, such as pain levels, mood scores, exercise completion, and therapy adherence. It sits alongside Remote Patient Monitoring (RPM), but where RPM collects physiological readings from devices, RTM captures what patients say about how they feel and how they are functioning. No dedicated hardware is needed: submissions come through an app, a web portal, or simple text messages.

What data does RTM track?

RTM covers non-physiological, patient-reported measures. Common examples include pain, mood, anxiety and depression scores, sleep quality, fatigue, medication adherence, exercise completion, functional status, energy levels, cognitive function, stress, and breathing difficulty. Because people report the information themselves, one program can follow musculoskeletal, respiratory, and cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT) cases alike.

How an RTM program runs

A functioning program has three stages.

Setup. The clinic decides which patients to enroll, which conditions to follow, what assessments patients complete, and who on the care team reviews incoming data. Patients are onboarded onto an RTM platform and monitoring begins. Some vendors, Actuvi among them, handle configuration and staff training for the practice.

Patient data submission. Enrolled patients send information on a defined schedule through the platform. Assessments can use conditional logic, so a high pain report triggers a follow-up question while a routine one moves on. Alert thresholds sit on each question, and staff only get notified when something genuinely needs attention.

Treatment management. Care team members review submissions on a dashboard, respond to alerts, communicate with patients, and log their time. The platform records that work automatically, keeps the auditable documentation billing requires, and produces the claims report. Those logged minutes drive reimbursement.

Who can bill for RTM

Providers who bill Medicare directly and whose scope of practice covers RTM can order and bill for it. Eligible clinician types include physicians, physical therapists, occupational therapists, speech-language pathologists, nurse practitioners, psychologists, clinical social workers, physician assistants, and registered dietitians. Therapy assistants can contribute treatment management time under general supervision with the correct modifier, and state scope-of-practice rules always apply.

The 2026 RTM CPT codes

CMS introduced the first RTM codes in 2022 for musculoskeletal and respiratory conditions, added CBT in 2024, and expanded the set again in the 2026 Physician Fee Schedule Final Rule, lowering billing thresholds and raising several payment rates.

CPT code	What it covers	Billing frequency
98975	Initial setup and patient education	Once per episode
98984, 98985	Device supply with 2 to 15 days of data transmission	Once every 30 days
98976, 98977, 98978	Device supply with 16 to 30 days of data	Once every 30 days
98979	First 10 to 19 minutes of treatment management	Once per calendar month
98980	First 20 minutes of treatment management services	Once per calendar month
98981	Each additional 20 minutes of management time	Multiple times per month

The 2026 additions matter because they dropped the floor. Before this year, clinics needed 16 days of data transmission and 20 minutes of management time before anything could be claimed. The new supply codes allow billing after just 2 days, and 98979 starts management reimbursement at 10 minutes. Short-term, post-surgical, and inconsistent patients who never qualified before now have a billing pathway.

A few rules sit on top. The supply codes are mutually exclusive within a 30-day period, as are the two base management codes. CPT 98981 only stacks on 98980, and management billing requires at least one interactive communication with the patient during the month. A fully optimized patient, billed at the 16 to 30 day supply tier with 20 or more minutes of attention, generates about $180 per month, so clinics add real revenue without adding patient volume.

Where RTM is used

Musculoskeletal care was the first home for RTM, and physical therapy, rehabilitation, pain, and orthopedic clinics remain its largest users. Respiratory programs followed, and CBT joined in 2024, opening the model to mental health, behavioral health, and ABA practices. Anywhere a care plan depends on what people do and report between appointments, RTM gives the clinic a way to see it and a way to get paid for the attention.

Where to find the top RTM platforms

HootMD has listed the top platforms for Remote Therapeutic Monitoring, and Actuvi comes in as number one. The full ranking is in Ranking the Best Remote Therapeutic Monitoring (RTM) Platforms in 2026.

HootMD’s coverage of RTM platforms, billing, and research:

What Is RTM Health? Remote Therapeutic Monitoring (RTM) Explained