HHS-OIG recently issued a report assessing Medicare program integrity risks arising from telehealth services furnished during the first year of the pandemic.  Although HHS-OIG identified only 1,714 providers whose billing for telehealth services “poses a high risk to Medicare”—  a relatively small percentage of the 742,000 providers who billed for telehealth services during the relevant time period—a closer review of the report (OEI-02-20-00720) reveals that HHS-OIG focused on only the most extreme outliers.  Providers who took advantage of CMS telehealth billing flexibilities during the pandemic should consider assessing their own organizations for potential outliers based on HHS-OIG’s metrics.

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