JointCoach is the instrument: phone-camera range of motion, adherence and pain, captured at home and reviewed monthly by your own clinician, billed under your own NPI. The pilot is the smallest honest test of whether monitoring pays for itself in your practice.
Remote Therapeutic Monitoring only works when someone is on record for the signal. The pilot puts one of your own PTs on record, gives them an instrument, and lets your practice bill.
Patients do the exercises you prescribed with their phone camera. Joint angle, reps, session length and a pain score are measured on the phone. Video never leaves the device. Try it now, no signup.
02 · THE OWNEROne PT you already employ owns every monitored episode and does the monthly review. The management codes only pay when that interaction happens, so the billing rule and the safety rule are the same rule.
03 · WHAT THE PATIENT BRINGSEach session's numbers are kept on the patient's device, never uploaded by the app, and roll into a 30-day summary they can print or hand to your PT at the visit: days with data, range-of-motion trend, pain, minutes.
04 · THE BILLYou bill Medicare RTM yourself: setup, device supply, and management. JointCoach never bills on your behalf and never supplies the clinician, which is exactly what the CY2027 proposed rule requires.
An honest fit check saves both sides a quarter. If the right-hand column describes you, the pilot will not pay and we would rather say so now.
The lines below are from the 2026 Medicare Physician Fee Schedule, after the January practice-expense update. Payment varies by locality, commercial coverage varies by plan, and the management line bills only in the months the review actually happens. Whether a monthly review read from the patient’s own phone at a visit, or from numbers the patient carries to the PT by tap, meets the RTM data-transmission wording is not settled; get a written billing-compliance read before the first claim.
| Line | What it requires |
|---|---|
| 98975 · setup and patient education | Once per episode, with at least 2 days of data |
| 98977 · device supply, musculoskeletal | 16 or more days of data in 30 (only if the software meets FDA’s device definition; JointCoach is not FDA-cleared and not listed) |
| 98985 · device supply, short period (new for 2026) | 2 to 15 days of data in 30 |
| 98980 · treatment management, first 20 minutes | One live interaction in the month |
| 98979 · short-duration management (new for 2026) | 10 to 19 minutes; the same live interaction as 98980, billed instead of it |
| 98981 · each additional 20 minutes | Only after 98980 |
| Planning basis | Model on the management codes 98979 and 98980 (one or the other in a month, each with a live interaction). The device-supply codes apply only if the software meets FDA’s section 201(h) device definition, which is not settled for JointCoach; because CMS defines the RTM code family around data from a qualifying device, confirm with your compliance lead before billing management codes on an unlisted app. |
| JointCoach software fee | None during the 90-day pilot. Post-pilot pricing: not set. |
Who can bill inside a joint-replacement global period. The operating surgeon is the practitioner receiving the 90-day global payment, so the surgeon cannot bill RTM on their own patient in that window. An employed PT can, under the PT’s own NPI. Source: telehealth.hhs.gov, “Billing for remote patient monitoring” (read 10 September 2026; the same source as /access). Confirm with your compliance lead.
Sources and caveats. Codes: CMS 2026 Physician Fee Schedule, after the January 2026 practice-expense update (the device-supply value in the original final rule was superseded). In a real-world PT program the management code was billed in about 53% of monitored months (Hohl et al., Journal of Neurologic Physical Therapy, 2026, full text), so do not plan on every month. RTM and remote physiologic monitoring cannot be billed for the same patient in the same month. The device-supply codes require that the monitoring software meet the FDA's definition of a medical device; JointCoach is not FDA-cleared and not listed, so plan on the management codes. This is not billing, legal or tax advice.
Your PT and we agree which of the five lower-limb exercises each patient does, the review cadence and the escalation rule. Your practice enrolls the first patients at their visits.
Weeks 3 to 12Patients do their sessions at home with the camera. Days with data, sessions, ROM and pain roll into one summary per patient.
MonthlyYour PT does the 20-minute review and the live interaction, documents the minutes, and the practice bills under its NPI.
Week 12You have real days-of-data, real minutes and real claims. At day 90 you continue, change the model, or stop; post-pilot pricing is not set. No lock-in either way.
Fourteen questions practices ask before a pilot, answered with the primary sources linked.
EVIDENCEAdherence, monitoring and outcomes, with the limits of each study stated and the papers linked.
CY2027Three conditions of payment quoted from the primary. Why the pilot is built around your employed PT.
No autoresponder sequence, no sales call script. We read what you write, check fit against the list above, and reply with either a start plan or an honest no.