For clinicians
Master game-based occupational therapy
Turn the games your clients already love into skilled therapy that is purposeful, documentable, and billable. Play and leisure are occupations — squarely inside your licensed scope — and this is where you learn to deliver them with confidence.
Why learn game-based OT
Already in your scope
Play and leisure are named occupation domains in the OT practice framework — this is core OT, delivered in a way clients love.
Billable today
Standard CPT and RTM codes already cover the skilled service you provide. The rails exist — you just deliver.
Built to hold up
Our training is designed around the two things that make game-based therapy defensible in the chart.
Play and leisure are named OT occupation domains
The AOTA Occupational Therapy Practice Framework, 4th edition (OTPF-4, 2020) defines the profession's domain as nine occupation categories — ADLs, IADLs, health management, rest and sleep, education, work, play, leisure, and social participation. Play is defined as activity that is "intrinsically motivated, internally controlled, and freely chosen." The framework holds that occupations are "both the means and the end" of the occupational therapy process, and directs practitioners toward interventions that are purposeful and occupation-based.
That has a simple, load-bearing consequence: because occupational therapy is defined by occupations like play, a licensed OT can use a game as a therapeutic activity with no FDA clearance required. Regulation attaches to the licensed therapist and the skilled service you provide — which is exactly what you already bring to every session.
Source: AOTA OTPF-4 (AJOT, 2020) ↗
Means and end. A game can be the means — the graded activity that builds a targeted skill — and the end, when returning to play or leisure is itself the goal the client values. Both are inside scope.
Four formats, one method
The method is cross-format — the skill is in the grading, not the platform.
Video games
Console, PC, and motion-controlled titles graded for motor, cognitive, and participation goals.
Virtual reality
Immersive environments used to increase therapy dose and rehearse real-world tasks.
Tabletop & role-playing
Board games and TTRPGs for cognition, communication, executive function, and social participation.
Physical & active play
Movement-based play that targets strength, range of motion, balance, and endurance.
Grading and adapting the game
Grading is the craft at the center of the method: adjusting a game's demands so it sits at the client's therapeutic edge and moves as they progress. Levers include difficulty settings, input method (adaptive controllers, switches, one-handed layouts), pacing and timing windows, cognitive load (navigation aids, hints, reduced clutter), sensory settings (contrast, captions, motion reduction), and the social structure of play. Our accessibility section catalogs the concrete settings and hardware by domain — motor control, cognition, vision, and hearing.
Two Medicare constraints — where your skill shows
Game-based therapy is billable today under standard codes, because billing attaches to the therapist's skilled service — the skilled work you already provide and document. Two things make that skilled service clear and defensible, and both play directly to a trained clinician's strengths:
- Direct, one-on-one contact. Timed codes reward hands-on contact time: you are actively grading, cueing, and adjusting the game throughout the session. That active, face-to-face skilled time is what you bill.
- Documented skilled components. Your note captures the clinical reasoning — the goal, the grading decisions, the cueing, and the client's response. Showing that reasoning is what distinguishes skilled therapy from recreation, and it is a habit good clinicians already have.
Source: CMS Billing & Coding Article A57067 ↗ (contractor-specific rules vary by MAC)
The billing rails already exist
Standard CPT / RTM codes clinicians use every day. Each links to its primary source.
Dynamic activities to improve functional performance; direct one-on-one, 15-minute units. On AOTA’s 2026 frequently-used OT code list.
Primary source ↗Attention, memory, reasoning, executive function; 97130 is the 15-minute add-on. Usable by OT practitioners since 2020.
Primary source ↗Added to the Medicare therapy code list Jan 1, 2022; OTs explicitly authorized (GO modifier).
Primary source ↗Effective Jan 1, 2023; reports VR technology as an adjunct to therapy. Temporary code — payer coverage uncertain.
Primary source ↗Codes are reported for the practitioner's skilled service time. This is educational information, not billing or coding advice — verify current rules with your payer and MAC.
Learn to deliver it — and to document it
Our training is built around the two constraints above: game-based therapy that is engaging for the client and defensible in the chart.