RTM Billing in 2026: CPT 98975 Through 98986, Explained

Remote therapeutic monitoring runs on ten CPT codes in 2026 — six that predate this year and four that took effect January 1 under the CY 2026 Physician Fee Schedule final rule. RTM gets less attention than its physiologic sibling, but for therapy practices and the specialties tracking adherence and therapeutic response, it is the remote monitoring program that fits. This guide covers every code, the new short-duration tiers, who can bill, the pairing prohibitions, and worked monthly examples.

All dollar figures are national average non-facility amounts from secondary rate tables. Verify each against the CMS Physician Fee Schedule lookup and your Medicare Administrative Contractor before billing.

How is RTM different from RPM?

Remote patient monitoring (RPM) tracks physiologic data — blood pressure, glucose, weight, oxygen saturation. Remote therapeutic monitoring tracks therapeutic data: respiratory status, musculoskeletal status, therapy adherence, and therapy response, typically through connected devices or software classified as medical devices.

Two structural differences follow. First, RTM's device-supply codes are organized by clinical modality — respiratory, musculoskeletal, and cognitive behavioral therapy — where RPM has a single device-supply track. Second, RTM was built to be billable by practitioners who cannot bill RPM's code family, which is why it matters so much to therapy disciplines. One rule the programs share without exception: RPM and RTM cannot be billed for the same patient in the same month.

In practice, the clinical dividing line is usually obvious from the data itself. A cellular blood pressure cuff or glucose meter produces physiologic values — that patient belongs in RPM. A connected home-exercise platform recording whether the patient completed the prescribed program, a monitored inhaler tracking use, an app capturing pain and function scores through a therapy episode — that is therapeutic response and adherence data, and the patient belongs in RTM. Where a patient could plausibly fit either program, the practice chooses one for the month; the codes do not allow hedging across both.

What are the RTM setup and device-supply codes?

CPT 98975 — setup and patient education. The onboarding code: initial device setup and education on the equipment. Roughly $22 national average. The 2026 rule revised 98975 to require two or more days of data in the monitoring episode — the RTM half of the fee schedule's move away from all-or-nothing thresholds.

The device-supply codes now come in pairs — one short-duration and one full-duration code per modality, based on days of data in a 30-day period:

The three codes in the left column are new for 2026, and they end the all-or-nothing dynamic: a patient whose device transmitted on 10 of 30 days now generates a device-supply claim instead of nothing. The CBT codes carry no national price — Medicare Administrative Contractors price them individually, so check with your MAC.

A warning about the new code mappings. Several vendor blogs published tables with the respiratory and musculoskeletal assignments swapped. Per APTA's practice advisory on the 2026 codes, 98984 is respiratory and 98985 is musculoskeletal. Verify the descriptors in your billing software directly — a transposed mapping here means systematically miscoded claims.

What are the RTM treatment-management codes?

Management time is billed per calendar month along a three-code path:

• CPT 98979 — first 10 minutes. New for 2026, covering months where management time totals 10–19 minutes. Roughly $26 national average. Not billable in the same month as 98980.
• CPT 98980 — first 20 minutes. The primary management code for months with 20 or more minutes. Roughly $54 national average.
• CPT 98981 — each additional 20 minutes. The add-on, roughly $41 per unit. It attaches to 98980 only — never to 98979.

The logic mirrors RPM exactly: months with fewer than 10 minutes bill nothing, 10–19 minutes bill the new short code, and 20 minutes or more move the month to 98980 with add-ons as documented time accumulates.

Who can bill RTM?

RTM's defining feature is its reach beyond the practitioners who bill RPM. The code family was designed so that clinicians such as physical therapists and occupational therapists — who cannot bill RPM's management codes — can run and bill monitoring programs, alongside physicians and other qualified health care professionals.

All RTM codes retain their "sometimes therapy" designation in 2026, meaning they can be furnished either as therapy services or outside a therapy context depending on who provides them and under what plan of care. Therapy practices should confirm how the designation applies to their billing scenarios with their MAC, since it affects how claims are reported.

Which RTM codes can be billed together?

The prohibitions are structural and worth encoding in your claim scrubber:

• One device-supply code per modality per 30-day period. 98984 and 98976 (respiratory), 98985 and 98977 (musculoskeletal), and 98986 and 98978 (CBT) are pairs — the day count selects one, and both can never appear for the same period.
• One management path per calendar month. 98979 and 98980 are mutually exclusive; 98981 attaches only to 98980.
• No RTM with RPM. The same patient cannot generate both RTM and RPM claims in the same month, under any code combination.

Setup (98975) bills at the start of an episode with its two-day data minimum, not monthly.

What do worked monthly examples look like?

Example 1 — the standard therapy month. A patient in a musculoskeletal program uses a connected exercise-adherence device on 18 of 30 days; the therapist documents 24 minutes of management including a patient call. Bill 98977 + 98980 — roughly $94 at hedged national averages.

Example 2 — the short episode. A post-operative patient is monitored for two weeks; the device records data on 12 days, and management time totals 22 minutes. Bill 98985 + 98980 — roughly $105. Before 2026, the 12 device days would have billed nothing.

Example 3 — full data, light touch. A stable respiratory patient transmits on 20 days; the month's management totals 14 minutes. Bill 98976 + 98979 — roughly $78. This month was also unbillable on the management side before the new 10-minute code.

Example 4 — below every floor. One day of data and 8 minutes of management bill nothing. The 2026 rule lowered the thresholds to 2 days and 10 minutes; it did not eliminate them.

Note a quirk visible in Example 2: at current secondary-table rates, the short-duration musculoskeletal code (98985, roughly $51) prices above the full-duration 98977 (roughly $40). Bill the code the day count dictates — the descriptors, not the rates, select the code.

What documentation supports RTM claims?

The record-keeping expectations mirror RPM's, adapted to RTM's episode structure:

• Enrollment: the order, the clinical indication, documented patient consent, and — given the setup revision — evidence the episode reached at least two days of data before 98975 is billed.
• Device supply: a per-period log of which days the device or software recorded data. The day count now selects between two codes per modality, so the platform's report must be accurate and archivable.
• Management time: dated entries with activity, duration, and the clinician who performed the work, totaled per calendar month. A month billed as 98980 should show at least 20 documented minutes; a 98981 unit needs a full additional 20.
• Modality: the record should make clear which system is being monitored — respiratory, musculoskeletal, or CBT — since it determines the code family, not just the day count.

How does the 2026 payment environment treat RTM?

Favorably, on the whole. The conversion factor behind every RTM code rose for 2026 — $33.5675 for qualifying APM participants and $33.4009 for all others, increases of 3.77% and 3.26% respectively. And the fee schedule's new −2.5% efficiency adjustment explicitly exempts care management, time-based, and new-for-2026 codes, which covers the entire RTM family — the codes were untouched by the year's most discussed cut. The practice-expense redistribution in the rule also favors non-facility settings, where RTM is billed.

None of that changes the discipline the codes demand, but it means the rates underneath an RTM program held steady or improved going into the year.

What are the most common RTM billing mistakes?

Swapping the new respiratory and musculoskeletal codes. The transposed-table problem is real; use the APTA mapping (98984 respiratory, 98985 musculoskeletal) and verify in your own system.

Billing both codes of a pair. A device-supply pair in the same 30 days, or 98979 with 98980 in the same month, is structurally invalid.

Running RTM and RPM concurrently. A patient belongs to one remote monitoring program per month. Choose based on the data: physiologic parameters point to RPM, therapeutic response and adherence point to RTM.

Ignoring the setup revision. 98975 now requires at least two days of data in the episode — enrollments that never transmit do not support a setup claim.

Missing the salvage codes. Programs still running 2025-era billing logic forfeit every 2–15-day month and every 10–19-minute month. The new codes exist precisely for those months.

How does RTM fit into a practice's remote monitoring strategy?

For primary care and cardiology-style panels, RPM is usually the anchor — the physiologic codes match the clinical data. RTM is the program for therapy practices, respiratory management, and programs built on adherence and response data, and its 2026 structure now mirrors RPM's flexibility tier for tier. The two code families' economics are close enough that the decision should be clinical, not financial.

The RPM side of the comparison — codes 99453 through the new 99445 and 99470, with its own worked examples — is covered in our 2026 RPM CPT code billing reference. To model an RTM program's revenue against your panel, use our reimbursement calculator, and see our RTM service overview for how Neuvora supports therapy-focused monitoring programs operationally.

This article is general billing information, not billing, legal, or medical advice. Verify current rates and payer policies against the CMS Physician Fee Schedule and your MAC before billing.