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Just how much telehealth fraud is there?
A new report from HHS’ Office of the Inspector General found that during the first year of the pandemic, 1,714 out of roughly 742,000 Medicare-certified providers billed for telehealth in ways indicating high risk of fraud, waste, or abuse, Mohana writes. Concerns about rampant fraud — and in turn, unnecessary Medicare spending — are among the holdups to permanently enshrining telehealth coverage expanded during the pandemic. The providers identified by the watchdog billed Medicare beneficiaries for nearly $130 million, but the relatively small number of providers and patterns in their billing, such as erroneously charging location-based fees, indicate cracking down on fraud may be manageable.
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