A timed therapy code for therapeutic exercise developing strength, endurance, range of motion, or flexibility, billed in 15 minute units of direct one on one time.
The most searched therapy code in rehab and a staple of chiropractic active care plans. Two properties drive everything about it: it is timed, so units follow the 8 minute rule, and it requires direct one on one contact, so a patient exercising independently while staff answer phones is not billable time. Payers that require the GP modifier on therapy lines expect it here.
A visit includes 12 minutes of instructed therapeutic exercise and 10 minutes of manual therapy. Under the 8 minute rule the 22 total timed minutes support one unit plus a second unit since the total crosses 22 minutes: one unit of 97110 and one of 97140, chosen because each service individually crossed 8 minutes. Billing two units of 97110 on 12 minutes of exercise is the classic overbill.
Timed unit billing follows the Medicare 8 minute rule in the Claims Processing Manual, Chapter 5, section 20.2: a unit requires at least 8 minutes of a timed service, and total timed minutes across services set the maximum units for the visit. Most commercial payers apply the same math.
Not payable to a chiropractor. Medicare covers only spinal CMT from DCs, so 97110 furnished in a chiropractic office is excluded for Medicare patients regardless of documentation, and patient notice rules apply if the patient will pay.
Unit counts that exceed documented minutes; billing supervised exercise as one on one; identical flowsheets visit after visit; missing GP modifier where the payer wants it.
Cervica's claim scrubber validates modifiers, units, and diagnosis pointers for 97110 before submission, per payer rules handle code substitutions and modifier requirements automatically, and when a payer pushes back anyway the denial worklist reads the adjustment codes and routes the claim to the exact fix.
General information for billing teams, not legal, coding, or payer specific advice. CPT is a registered trademark of the American Medical Association; code descriptions here are paraphrased in our own words and the AMA's CPT publications control. Payer policies vary and control for any individual claim.