As of Jan. 1, 2021, CMS permanently allows PTs in private practice and facility-based settings to render e-visits (CPT codes 98970-98972) under Medicare.

Here is brief guide to using e-visits under Medicare. If you need more explanation, return to APTA's article Furnishing and Billing E-Visits: Addressing Your Questions.

E-visits are "non face-to-face patient-initiated digital communications that require a clinical decision that otherwise typically would have been provided in the office." The code descriptors for the CPT codes related to e-visits indicate that the codes are intended to cover short-term (up to seven days) assessments and management activities that are conducted online or via some other digital platform and include any associated clinical decision-making.

An e-visit can comprise more than one communication between you and your patient, and includes all activities that you perform to meet the assessment and management needs as identified by the patient. The maximum duration of an e-visit is seven days.

An e-visit is not a treatment session, and it does not meet the Medicare definition of telehealth.