Medsien Supports Practices with More Remote Monitoring Services: Launches Remote Therapeutic Monitoring Program for 2022

The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) recently released the 2022 Medicare Physician Fee Schedule Final Rule. Effective January 1, 2022, CMS has introduced a new category of digital health services - Remote Therapeutic Monitoring (RTM) - and associated billing and reimbursement codes to complement the existing suite of remote patient monitoring (RPM) codes covered under Medicare. The new codes are intended to expand the scope and reach of digital health technologies to reimburse monitoring of non-physiologic data. The new RTM codes broaden Medicare reimbursement for remote monitoring beyond the existing Remote Physiologic Monitoring (RPM) codes, and represent one of the latest advancements to modernize reimbursement for digital health. The RTM family includes three practice expense (PE)-only codes and two codes that include professional work.

Ongoing Trends: Medicare committed to the growth of care management & Medsien committed to helping practices by expanding our services as annual Medicare changes demand

This continuous trend of CMS investment in care management and the expansion of remote patient monitoring likely will continue. CMS annually adding new codes, increasing reimbursement and easing requirements more and more - clearly shows the trend towards more and more investment and commitment to these programs and the positive outcomes they yield. Remote monitoring will continue its growth as an area of great benefit to patients and providers over the coming years.

An interesting trend to note is that RTM services apply more to specialty providers, showing that Medicare is moving into reimbursement and support for a broader range of providers. We see this same trend on the Chronic Care Management (CCM) services side with the addition of Principal Care Management (PCM) codes and reimbursement as well.

Remote Therapeutic Monitoring(RTM) and what to expect from it

CMS recognizes therapeutic data as an important category of patient information that can be assessed remotely. RTM is designed for the management of patients using devices that collect therapeutic, non-physiologic data.  Data around indicators such as therapy/medication adherence, therapy/medication response, and pain level can be collected and billed under the new RTM codes. Non-physiologic measures can allow a provider to determine how well a patient is responding to a medication, what social or environmental factors affect the patient’s respiratory or musculoskeletal health status, and what changes could be made to improve the patient’s health. This differs from RPM codes, which only can be used in conjunction with tracking physiologic data (e.g. heart rate, blood pressure and blood sugar levels) - patient status vitals important to ongoing chronic care management. RTM codes offer the promise of expansion and broader applications for patient care down the road.

Medsien’s RTM program can help your patients and practices benefit from these growing trends in patient care by improving outcomes, patient engagement, patient satisfaction and increasing reimbursement. This is a good time for care management in general, and for practices that have already adopted good care management programs. But it’s really the perfect time to add a robust care management program and remote monitoring to your practice. Medsien’s top of the line, turn-key, highly sophisticated programs are fast and easy to implement and run, require no administrative or staffing burden nor any upfront costs to the practice.

For more information on our programs and services visit Remote Therapeutic Monitoring.