Remote Therapeutic Monitoring is a way for care teams to collect and monitor therapeutic non-physiological data between clinic visits. In a respiratory RTM program, that can include a patient’s medication adherence, response to a prescribed plan, rehab-exercise completion, perceived exertion, dyspnea, and more.
The goal is to give clinical teams visibility into patient progress between appointments so they can make timely adjustments to care plans. A well-designed RTM program keeps patient reporting quick and low friction while providing staff with simple workflows for handling alerts and documenting clinical time.
RTM (Remote Therapeutic Monitoring) vs RPM: Choosing the Right Model
Respiratory care often involves both behavioral adherence and physiological monitoring, which is why RTM and RPM are frequently conflated. While related, they serve distinct clinical and billing purposes:
Consideration | Respiratory RTM | Respiratory RPM |
Primary data | Therapy compliance, patient-reported experience, treatment response, side effects, medication adherence | Physiological measurements |
Examples | Inhaler adherence and technique, Symptom and breathlessness scores, pulmonary rehab exercise completion, triggers, rescue-medication use | Pulse oximetry, spirometry |
Device | No device to buy or ship. Patients use the Actuvi app on their own phone. | Requires a connected device |
Question it answers | Is the care plan working? Is the patient following treatment, improving, or facing any barriers that need attention? | What are the patient's exact physiological measurements? |
Respiratory RTM (Remote Therapeutic Monitoring) use cases
Depending on the patient's condition, a respiratory RTM program can be tailored to track specific therapeutic milestones across various care pathways.
COPD Care Pathways: Tracks controller medication consistency, rescue inhaler frequency, activity tolerance, and flare-up symptoms. It provides a reliable record of treatment adherence to guide medication titration between visits.
Asthma Management: Focuses on controller adherence, trigger exposure, daytime or nighttime symptoms and more for patients with uncontrolled asthma. Configured alert thresholds notify the care team when symptom patterns worsen, enabling early clinical outreach.
Pulmonary Rehabilitation: Extends rehab programs beyond the facility wall. RTM tracks home exercise completion, dyspnea & fatigue response, perceived exertion, and more giving clinicians the data needed to advance or adjust exercise programs remotely.
Respiratory Remote Therapeutic Monitoring (RTM) billing codes
Medicare reimburses clinical teams for Respiratory RTM through a distinct set of CPT codes.
CPT | What it covers | Frequency | Reimbursement |
98975 | Initial setup and patient education | Once per episode of care | $21.71 |
98984 | Respiratory device and data transmission, 2 to 15 days | Once per 30 days | $51.44 |
98976 | Respiratory device and data transmission, 16 to 30 days | Once per 30 days | $51.44 |
98979 | Treatment management, first 10 to 19 minutes | Once per calendar month | $26.39 |
98980 | Treatment management, first 20 minutes | Once per calendar month | $54.11 |
98981 | Treatment management, each additional 20 minutes | Multiple per calendar month | $41.42 |
Before launching, confirm patient eligibility, payer policy, and state-specific requirements with your RTM software vendor. Actuvi’s guide to RTM benefits and billing offers additional context on the broader program structure.
How to launch a Respiratory Remote Therapeutic Monitoring (RTM) program
Actuvi breaks the launch process into three simple steps, getting your program live in under two weeks with our AI-enabled RTM program builder.
Step 1: Program Design You handle the clinical decisions, and we handle the tech build. Your team simply decides which patients to target, what clinical goals to track, and when an alert should trigger. Actuvi takes that information and builds ready-to-use assessments, sets up the monitoring tracks, manages team roles, and configures the automated workflows.
Step 2: Program Launch Your providers introduce the program to the patient. Actuvi handles all the logistics: we send the app download instructions, import patient data, send reminders & notifications, and track & chart all the responses. If a patient forgets to engage, Actuvi’s AI agents automatically engage them to increase compliance. We train your staff on how to review the alert dashboard and export the billing reports.
Step 3: Ongoing Optimization As clinical needs change; you can modify assessments, update a patient's monitoring track, or adjust workflows at any time. Actuvi also provides ongoing support and weekly reports so your team can easily track performance and spot opportunities to improve.
Launch Your Remote Therapeutic Monitoring Program with Actuvi
Actuvi gives care teams the software, integrations, and automation needed to monitor patient progress, catch complications early, and capture Medicare reimbursement without adding administrative overhead.
Talk to our RTM expert to launch your Respiratory RTM program → https://www.actuvi.com/launchrtm.
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