PatientTrac Companion | Reimbursement Series

Post-procedure care pathway showing recovery monitoring from surgery through home follow-up
Short-duration monitoring now has dedicated 2026 coding pathways, but other Medicare coverage and bundling rules still govern each episode.

Discharge day after a hernia repair. The patient leaves with a Bluetooth scale and a connected cuff, paired to her phone in the recovery bay. Readings flow for ten days. On day eleven she feels fine and stops. The data stream ends two weeks short of a month.

Those ten days would not have satisfied the older 16-day device-supply threshold for the full-month RPM pathway.

For 2026, the Medicare Physician Fee Schedule recognizes a new short-duration RPM device-supply code, CPT 99445, for 2–15 days of data in a 30-day period. The existing CPT 99454 pathway covers 16–30 days. The codes describe different day ranges and should not be treated as interchangeable claims for the same monitoring period. Payment amounts are geographically adjusted and should be verified in the current Medicare Physician Fee Schedule before use.

A second new code, CPT 99470, addresses the first 10 minutes of RPM treatment-management time in a calendar month and requires at least one real-time interactive communication with the patient or caregiver. The longer-duration treatment-management pathway remains separate. Practices should verify code-pairing, supervision, time and other billing requirements against current CMS guidance and their Medicare Administrative Contractor.

The new short-duration codes can fit qualifying monitoring episodes that do not reach the longer day or time thresholds, but they do not override other Medicare payment rules. In particular, routine post-operative care may already be included in a surgical global package. Separate payment requires that the service itself be separately payable under Medicare rules—for example, care for an underlying condition or an added treatment course that is not part of normal surgical recovery—and all other RPM requirements must still be met.

Post-procedure recovery is an important Companion use case, but the clinical use case and the billing pathway are not the same thing. Once qualifying connected-device integration is in place, Companion’s Remote Monitoring mode is designed to count transmitted days, route readings to clinician review, and document the required interactive communication. Whether a specific episode is separately billable remains a payer, coding, medical-necessity and global-package determination for the practice.

The patient on day eleven has recovered, and the readings have stopped. The ten-day episode may now fit a short-duration RPM code if the device, clinical, documentation, coverage and bundling requirements are satisfied; the software itself does not determine that result.

Reimbursement information is provided for educational purposes and reflects publicly available guidance reviewed as of September 28, 2026. Coverage, coding, documentation requirements, medical necessity and payment vary by payer, locality, patient circumstances and service. PatientTrac supports clinical and documentation workflows and does not determine code selection or guarantee reimbursement. Qualified billing and clinical staff should verify current payer requirements.

Primary Sources

Sources reviewed September 28, 2026. Links should be rechecked at publication and during periodic reimbursement review.