The PM&R Reimbursement Landscape
The Revenue Base Is Broad. The Pressure Is on Every Line of It.
Physiatry is one of medicine's most diversified professional P&Ls — and that diversity is both the opportunity and the exposure. The margin lives in the procedures you capture, the drug you buy and bill, and the therapy you own.
A single physiatry practice can bill office and consultative E/M, electrodiagnostics (EMG/NCS), interventional spine and joint injections, spasticity management with botulinum toxin under buy-and-bill, and therapy (PT/OT) as an ancillary line — each governed by its own coverage rules, edits, and payer policy. Electrodiagnostic complexity is routinely under-documented, injection reimbursement swings on site-of-service, and buy-and-bill economics turn on acquisition cost versus allowable. The result is a revenue base that is rich in aggregate but leaks quietly, line by line.
Layered on top are prior-authorization regimes and therapy medical-necessity thresholds signaled by the KX modifier, workers'-compensation and out-of-network dynamics, prosthetics, orthotics, and DME, and — for IRF-affiliated groups — the discipline of the IRF PPS and the 60% Rule. As orthopedics and pain platforms consolidate and post-acute shifts toward functional-outcome and value-based models, the same physiatrist can be worth dramatically different amounts depending on how the full base is coded, contracted, and defended. That is precisely where Fulcrum works.
* Illustrative composition. Replace with your confirmed figures before launch; reflects current CMS/MedPAC methodology and public payer data, 2024–2026.