Is this Remote Therapeutic Monitoring thing really worth my time?
The power of inertia cannot be overstated, especially in the physical therapy world where change is difficult to enact. This difficulty stems from the intense complexity of rehabilitating an injured human being as an injury is more than just damaged musculature, an injury can completely debilitate a person both physically and psychologically. So, when a change to the care delivery process comes up the pushback SHOULD happen to make sure the change will ultimately be worth the price.
Unfortunately, the above refers to changes you or your clinic leadership can control, reimbursement cuts do not fall into that category. While we at SaRA Health believe that rehab professionals are under-reimbursed in relation to the value created, what CMS and commercial payers will pay is out of our control. With double digit percentage cuts to reimbursement clinics have three (but really two) options - increase volume, increase reimbursement per patient, or gut it out (not a great option).
Increasing the volume of patients will require substantial investments in both demand generation and in treatment staff so this option will not be a “quick fix”. Simply surviving by gutting out these current cuts in hopes for better days in the future is an option as well, however, simply accepting hard times without trying to do something seems imprudent. Finally, there’s increasing reimbursement per patient which can be done by increasing the billable amount during an episode which is where we believe is the best bang for your buck.
We believe Remote Therapeutic Monitoring (RTM) provides the best option for rehabilitation professionals to increase reimbursement per patient while also improving the patient/clinician relationship. With Remote Therapeutic Monitoring you can add ~$50 per patient per month (with CPT codes 98975 and 98977) using a platform like SaRA Health which does nearly all the work for you and requires very minimal change to your workflow. We advise clinics to start there then look at how to integrate CPT codes 98980 and 98981 into your practice as these pay well, ~$60 and ~$50, respectively and can drive a longer term relationship with your patients. With these RTM codes clinics now have a very viable option to keep in touch (and billing) patients after they do not want to come in for visits. We take a deeper dive into the future of rehabilitation with Remote Therapeutic Monitoring, however if you do not want to wait shoot me a note (steven@srahealth.com)
