In March, Medicare chief Seema Verma announced a “historic action” to make virtual medical care or telemedicine more available through the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS).
She temporarily lifted a variety of federal restrictions on the use of the service to expand services beyond the limited rural areas. Verma also praised telehealth, saying it could handle routine care for an older patient with diabetes without risking a visit to a medical office during the pandemic.
A Medicare recipient with mild flu-like symptoms could receive advice from a doctor at home “instead of leaving the house and sitting in a waiting room full of other vulnerable people,” said Verna.
Mike Cohen, an operations officer with the Health and Human Services (HHS) Inspector General’s Office, said in April that anti-fraud “guardrails have been removed under this epidemic. The concern is that things will never go back to what they were. There will be a lot of pressure on CMS to make at least some of these changes permanent.” He added that the action resulted in an increase in telemedicine fraud.
Sober homes substance abuse treatment fraud
Defendants have been charged with more than $845 million in alleged fraud connected to substance abuse treatment facilities or sober homes. And other defendants charged with over $806 million connected to fraud and illegal opioid distribution schemes nationwide.
