2021 Remote Patient Monitoring Changes: 10 Key Takeaways for Practices

In December, the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) released its 2021 Medicare physician fee schedule final rule. Within the final rule were some significant changes concerning remote patient/physiological monitoring (RPM) and the provision of other remote services. Practices with existing RPM programs or those thinking about launching programs in 2021 should take the time to understand these changes and ensure that their programs comply with the new rules.

Despite significant industry pushback, CMS finalized that it will reimplement the requirement that an established patient-physician relationship exists for RPM's furnishing following the end of the COVID-19 public health emergency.

These omissions caused considerable confusion in the industry, going so far as to prompt several large RPM companies to inform their customers that they can bill under the two measurement-day waiver for any patient regardless of COVID-19 status.