How RTM Is Quietly Becoming the Most Profitable Add-On in Outpatient PT

You have seven patients on your schedule, two no-shows, one insurance dispute waiting in your billing queue, and a staff meeting at five. You’ve generated roughly the same revenue as you did two years ago, even with more patients and working harder than ever. Reimbursement rates haven’t kept up with the effort you’ve put in.

This is the operational reality for most outpatient physical therapy clinic owners right now. Most of them are solving it the same way: seeing more patients, hiring more staff, and opening more locations. However, there is a revenue stream that’s already sitting inside their existing patient relationships, waiting to be activated.

Remote Therapeutic Monitoring (RTM) is not a new concept. The CPT codes have been in place since 2022. Medicare and a growing number of commercial payers are paying for it. And yet most outpatient PT clinics either haven’t implemented it or are unaware of it. The ones that have figured it out are generating meaningful additional revenue without adding more appointments to their schedule.  

Here’s what’s actually happening, and why RTM may be the most underutilized financial lever in outpatient PT today.

The Numbers Behind RTM Reimbursement

RTM is billed through six CPT codes, each covering a distinct component of the monitoring relationship. Understanding how they stack is the foundation of knowing what RTM is actually worth per patient.

Code 98975, the setup code, reimburses $19 and is billed once per episode of care. From there, the ongoing monthly billing is where the real math lives. Code 98985 covers the device supply for musculoskeletal data collected over 2 to 15 days within 30 days, reimbursing $55. Code 98977 covers the same device supply category but applies when data is collected over at least 16 days in 30 days, also reimbursing $55. For most engaged patients, 98977 is the target, since it reflects meaningful, sustained participation in their program.

On the treatment management side, code 98979 reimburses $26 for the first 10 minutes of monitoring time per month, while 98980 reimburses $50 for the first 20 minutes. Code 98981, billed at $40 per additional 20-minute increment, can be billed multiple times per month, giving practices a pathway to scale reimbursement for complex or high-engagement patients.

For a standard active RTM patient reaching the 16-day threshold in a given month, a practice billing 98977 and 98980 together captures $105 in that billing cycle. Add a single 98981 increment, and that rises to $145. Across a panel of 30 active RTM patients, that translates to roughly $3,150 to $4,350 in additional monthly revenue. For most outpatient PT practices, that is a meaningful shift in monthly margin.

Why Most Clinics Aren’t Capturing It

The most straightforward answer is that RTM is still new. The CPT codes were introduced in 2022, and awareness among outpatient PT clinic owners remains surprisingly low. Many clinics that would be excellent candidates for RTM simply haven’t encountered it in any meaningful way. When you don’t know a revenue stream exists, you can’t pursue it.

For the clinics that are aware of RTM, the most common obstacle is time. Outpatient PT practices run on tight schedules. Therapists are seeing patients back-to-back. Front desk staff are managing authorizations, scheduling gaps, and incoming calls. The bandwidth to research, pilot, and implement a new clinical program simply doesn’t exist during a normal week. RTM gets added to a list of things to look into, and stays there.

This is the part of the RTM conversation that most technology vendors skip over, because it’s inconvenient for them. Implementation takes real effort. If a clinic has to redesign its intake workflow, train staff on a new platform, manually track patient engagement data, build a billing documentation process from scratch, and manage denials on top of everything else, the cost in time and operational disruption outweighs the revenue benefit.

How PhyxUp Health Is Built for This

PhyxUp Health was built around a different premise: that a fully managed RTM service should fit into your existing workflow, not require you to build a new one around it. 

We handle setup, patient onboarding, ongoing monitoring, documentation, and billing, so your clinic doesn’t need to manage day-to-day RTM operations or change how care is delivered. Most clinics can launch RTM with little to no additional staff time. 

On the billing side, we provide an end-to-end reimbursement process: eligibility checks, claim submission, and denial management, all aligned with RTM CPT code requirements. The goal is to reduce administrative burden, minimize denials, and support consistent reimbursement without adding internal billing workload to your team. The revenue is captured. The work of capturing it doesn’t fall on your staff.

The Window Is Open – But Not Indefinitely

RTM adoption is still early. That is an advantage for clinics that move now, and a disadvantage for clinics that wait.

When a neighboring practice starts offering RTM, and yours doesn’t, the conversation shifts. Physicians who are sending patients to two comparable clinics will start to notice which one is producing better between-session engagement data and cleaner documentation. Patients who experience the continuity of RTM-supported care and then change clinics will notice its absence. The bar moves quietly, and then it moves fast.

The clinics generating RTM revenue today aren’t doing so because they have more resources or a larger team. They moved because they found a workflow that fit, got their documentation in order, and made a deliberate decision to stop leaving revenue behind. The add-on was never going to announce itself. It rarely does.

Working with PhyxUp Health means having a hands-on partner, not just a software provider. We stay actively involved in RTM operations. Our team works closely with your clinic to support execution, optimize performance over time, and reduce operational burden, so you can focus on delivering care while building sustainable revenue.

Ready to see what RTM revenue looks like for your clinic specifically? Request a demo → https://phyxuphealth.com/request-demo.