The Office of Inspector General (OIG) recently created a new webpage related to telehealth. The purpose of the webpage is to summarize the OIG’s telehealth oversight work to provide a summary of its findings and recommendations that can be used by policymakers and other stakeholders to evaluate potential changes to federal telehealth policies.
The usage of telehealth over the prior two years has surged, and providers across the country have faced ever-evolving requirements for billing and receiving reimbursement for telehealth, including temporary changes that expire with the end of the public health emergency. The COVID-19 pandemic has also led the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) to reconsider its prior telehealth reimbursement policies. While the new OIG webpage does not provide resources for health care providers’ telehealth compliance, it does provide summaries of OIG’s workplan, evaluations and inspections, as well as the results of OIG audits, as each relate to telehealth. These reports from the OIG can be a signal to providers as to where the OIG is targeting its enforcement actions, and thus, where providers may wish to focus their telehealth compliance efforts. The health care provider community would be well served to regularly review the OIG’s new webpage.