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The short answerThe per-patient building blockSizing a realistic panelThe annual math, by panel sizeWhat comes out before it's ROIWhere the number is most fragileFAQKey takeaways
- One steadily-billing RTM patient is worth roughly $105–$147 a month in device-supply plus management-time codes (CY2026, before locality adjustment).
- Annualized across an illustrative 15–40-patient active panel, that's roughly $19,000–$51,000 a year in gross RTM revenue for one full-time PT.
- The one-time setup code (98975) is excluded from that recurring figure — it bills once per episode, not every month.
- Software and staff time are what turn gross revenue into real ROI — and documentation gaps, not the fee schedule, are what shrink it most.
A full-time PT running RTM on a realistic active panel can generate roughly $19,000 to $51,000 a year in gross CY2026 Medicare RTM revenue, before software and staff-time costs — across an illustrative range of 15 to 40 active patients billing device-supply and treatment-management codes each month. That's recurring revenue, not a one-time figure, and the panel-size range is illustrative rather than a benchmark: the real number for any given PT depends far more on how many enrolled patients actually stay documented each month than on the fee schedule itself.
The per-patient building block
Annual ROI starts from the same monthly unit as the RTM revenue math for a practice generally, but here the goal is a full-year number for one clinician's panel, so it helps to fix the per-patient figure first. In a steady month where a patient hits the device-supply threshold and the PT documents enough management time plus the required interactive call, an enrolled patient can generate:
98977(device supply, 16–30 data-days) — $51.4498980(treatment management, first 20 minutes) — $54.1198981(each additional full 20-minute block, if reached) — $41.42 per unit
That's $105.55 a month at the baseline tier (98977 + 98980), or $146.97 if the month's management time stacks one 98981 unit. These are CY2026 national non-facility amounts before locality adjustment — see Sources & verification below for the citation, and the full CPT codes guide for the complete code ladder including the lighter-adherence 98985 tier.
One patient, one steady month, is worth roughly $105 to $147. The annual ROI question is really: how many months, times how many patients, actually get billed.
Sizing a realistic full-time panel
There's no CMS-published number for how many RTM patients one full-time PT should carry — it depends on caseload mix, how many patients fit a home-exercise or non-operative monitoring pattern, and how much of the RTM workflow overlaps with visits already happening. Our small-clinic break-even guide frames 10–20 active patients as the point where a clinic's overhead starts paying for itself; a full-time PT with a fuller caseload and an efficient enrollment workflow can reasonably carry more than that.
This article uses three illustrative tiers — 15, 25, and 40 active patients — to show how the annual number scales, not as a target or an industry benchmark. Model your own panel against your actual mix of post-operative and non-operative patients before treating any of these figures as a plan.
The annual math, by panel size
| Active RTM patients | Monthly revenue (baseline tier) | Annual revenue (baseline) | Annual revenue (with 98981 stacked) |
|---|---|---|---|
| 15 | $1,583.25 | $18,999 | $26,455 |
| 25 | $2,638.75 | $31,665 | $44,091 |
| 40 | $4,222.00 | $50,664 | $70,546 |
The headline range in this article's short answer — roughly $19,000 to $51,000 a year — spans the baseline-tier column across the three panel sizes; the right-hand column shows how much higher it climbs if a meaningful share of the panel also reaches the additional 20-minute management tier most months.
What comes out before it's actually ROI
Gross RTM revenue isn't net revenue. Two costs determine how much of the number above actually reaches the practice's bottom line:
- RTM software. Typically priced per active patient per month (BoneArc publishes graduated pricing starting at $15/patient/month — see bonearc.com/pricing for current rates). At a 25-patient panel, that's a few hundred dollars a month against a few thousand dollars a month in gross RTM revenue — a cost that scales with the same panel size driving the revenue.
- Staff time. Tracking data-days, logging management minutes, and documenting the monthly interactive call takes real time if done by hand — chasing down which patients are close to a threshold, reconstructing a month's minutes from scattered notes, confirming the call happened. This is usually the larger and more variable of the two costs, and it's the one billing-gate automation is built to shrink.
A practice comparing two platforms, or comparing software to a manual process, should model both costs against its own panel size rather than assuming either is negligible.
Where the annual number is most fragile
The table above assumes every enrolled patient bills every eligible month — the real gap between potential and realized RTM revenue is almost never the fee schedule. It's eligible months that never got billed: a patient who lapsed on logging and missed the data-day threshold, a month with real management time but no documented interactive call, consent that was never captured before monitoring started. Each of those turns a $105–$147 month into $0 for that patient, regardless of panel size.
That's the same finding the RTM revenue math makes at the practice level: the number moves on enrollment and documentation completeness, not on rates. For one full-time PT's annual total, a panel that reliably bills 10 of 12 months per patient is worth meaningfully more than a larger panel that only bills 6 of 12 — which is why the panel-size scenarios above should be treated as a ceiling to work toward, not a number that shows up automatically.
The gap between the table above and your actual year is documentation, not enrollment.
BoneArc tracks data-days, review time, and the call attestation automatically, so more of a full-time PT's eligible months actually get billed — closing the gap between gross and realized RTM revenue.
See it on your panel →FAQ
How much RTM revenue can one full-time PT generate per year?
Roughly $19,000 to $51,000 a year in gross CY2026 Medicare RTM revenue, before software and staff-time costs, across an illustrative range of 15 to 40 active RTM patients billed at a steady monthly level. The real number depends on how many patients stay enrolled and documented each month, not on the fee schedule itself.
How many active RTM patients should a full-time PT expect to carry?
There's no CMS-set panel size. It depends on caseload mix and how many patients fit a home-exercise or non-operative monitoring pattern. This article uses 15, 25, and 40 as illustrative scenarios, not a benchmark — model your own caseload.
Does the annual RTM revenue estimate include the one-time setup code?
No. The annual figures are steady-state, recurring revenue from device-supply and treatment-management codes only. CPT 98975 bills once per episode of care, not monthly, so it's excluded and called out separately.
What costs should be subtracted from gross RTM revenue to get real ROI?
RTM software (typically per active patient per month) and the staff time spent tracking data-days, logging minutes, and documenting the monthly call. A platform that automates the billing gates shrinks the staff-time cost, which is usually the larger of the two.
Is the gross RTM revenue figure the same for every PT?
No — actual payment varies by MAC, locality, and payer contract, and the CY2026 national figures used here are a starting point. The bigger driver of variance is usually documentation completeness, not the fee schedule.
payer-rules/medicare-baseline.json. A re-verification pass against the primary CMS sources was attempted for this article on 2026-08-17; cms.gov, federalregister.gov, and govinfo.gov were unreachable through this environment's network egress controls at that time, so the figures above reflect the most recent successful retrieval (2026-07-03) rather than a same-day re-fetch — flagged here for a fresh check before publication. All annual figures are simple multiplication of the stated monthly amounts and are illustrative math, not a projection, guarantee, or CMS-published benchmark; panel-size scenarios are this article's own illustrative framing. Educational information, not billing or legal advice — confirm your own fee schedule with your MAC and payer contracts.