CPT 97110: therapeutic exercise

97110 is therapeutic exercise: work aimed at strength, endurance, range of motion or flexibility in one or more body areas. It is a timed code, billed in 15-minute units of direct one-to-one contact, and it is the workhorse of an outpatient caseload — the straight-leg raise, the loaded squat pattern, the resisted external rotation.

The breadth is the problem. Because almost any exercise fits the descriptor, the code carries no information on its own. Everything a reviewer needs has to come from the note.

Units come from the day’s total timed minutes, not from 97110 in isolation. Twenty-three minutes of exercise is two units on its own — and might be only one once the rest of the visit is counted, because the total-minutes table caps the day.

The arithmetic is worth running rather than eyeballing: the units calculator applies the CMS table and shows the difference between per-code rounding and the day cap.

The line is impairment versus task. 97110 targets a component — this muscle, this arc, this endurance limit. 97530 targets a functional activity built out of several components at once: lifting a box to a shelf, carrying a bag up stairs.

A seated knee extension is 97110 in every reading. A sit-to-stand drilled for hip-hinge quality is arguable and usually 97110; the same sit-to-stand embedded in a transfer-and-carry sequence is 97530. Say which framing you used in the objective and the argument is over before it starts.

Three things, every visit: what you did with enough specificity that another clinician could repeat it, what changed, and why it needed you. “Therex 2 units” fails all three. “Sit-to-stand 3 × 10 with verbal cueing for hip hinge; flexion 55°, was 40°; cueing still required under fatigue” passes all three in one line.

If the sentence would be equally true of any patient on any day, it is not documentation.

The SOAP note builder lays those three out in the order a reviewer reads them.

Four patterns cover most of it. Repetition — the identical exercise list for eight visits, with no progression, reads as an independent programme. No measurement — nothing objective moved, so nothing shows the intervention worked. Volume — more units than the day’s total minutes allow. And the missing assessment — the note describes a treatment and never says why a licensed clinician was required.

Unit rules: CMS Pub. 100-04 Medicare Claims Processing Manual, Chapter 5, §20.2.C — Counting Minutes for Timed Codes in 15 Minute Units, read 2026-09-04. CPT is a trademark of the American Medical Association; descriptions here are our own summaries.