On August 28, 2025, OIG published a report titled “Data Snapshot: Billing for Remote Patient Monitoring in Medicare.” According to the report, Medicare claims and expenditures for remote patient monitoring increased significantly in 2024 over the year prior. Based on this data, OIG echoed its previous calls for greater oversight in remote patient monitoring to minimize program integrity risks. The report describes five measures OIG has developed for monitoring claims data to ensure compliance with Medicare’s payment requirements for remote patient monitoring. OIG tested those measures against the 2024 claims data and included the results in its report.
Remote patient monitoring, also known as “remote physiologic monitoring,” refers to use of equipment by patients to collect their own health data (from the comfort of their home) and transmit it to their health care provider. The provider uses that data to remotely treat or manage the patient’s condition. Medicare allows providers to bill for that treatment if the patient has a chronic or acute condition that requires monitoring. Providers can also bill Medicare for the equipment and the time spent training the patient to use it.
Medicare began covering remote patient monitoring services in 2018. Each year since, claims and outlays for these services have increased dramatically. In a separate report published last year, OIG reported that since 2019, the number of enrollees receiving remote patient monitoring services and the total Medicare expenditures for those services had increased by ten and twenty-fold, respectively. OIG concluded at that time that this dramatic increase in claims and expenditures warrants additional oversight.
OIG reiterated this concern in its report published last Friday. The report indicates that the number of enrollees receiving patient monitoring services increased by 27 percent in 2024. OIG’s report also says that Medicare payments for remote patient monitoring were $536 million in 2024, which represents a 31 percent increase over the year prior. “These data provide further support for the findings and recommendations in our first report which found that the use of these services in Medicare has the potential to greatly expand and that additional oversight is needed.”
OIG’s report from last week describes five measures that OIG developed to monitor claims data for remote patient monitoring. OIG used these measures to review the claims submitted by 4,639 medical practices that routinely billed for remote patient monitoring in 2024. The report includes OIG’s analysis of those measures.
The first measure monitors significant increases in enrollees. OIG found that 32 of the sampled medical practices increased the number of new enrollees for whom the practice billed remote patient monitoring by over 150 percent in a single month during 2024. OIG said that while increases of this magnitude could represent legitimate growth, it can also be a “marker of fraud,” and “signal a need for further scrutiny.”
Second, OIG calculated the percentage of enrollees with whom the medical practices did not have a prior relationship before billing remote patient monitoring. CMS requires that at least one provider in the practice must have an in-person or telehealth visit with the patient before the practice can bill for remote patient monitoring. OIG found that among the sampled practices, 45 did not have a prior relationship with more than 80 percent of the patients for whom they billed remote patient monitoring in 2024.
Third, OIG measured the percentage of enrollees for whom the practice billed for remote patient monitoring equipment and education but did not bill for treatment management. OIG found that 52 of the sampled practices did not bill treatment management for more than 75 percent of their enrollees. OIG found that this warrants further scrutiny to ensure that remote patient monitoring is being used effectively to treat the enrollee’s condition.
Fourth, OIG identified 32 practices that were billing remote patient monitoring services for the same enrollee as two or more other practices. This “raises concern that they may be billing for monitoring that is not necessary or not provided.” Fifth and last, OIG found 20 practices that were billing for more than one remote patient monitoring device, even though Medicare only allows practices to bill for only one remote patient monitoring device per month per enrollee. This, according to OIG, “may indicate that practices are double billing for the same device, or billing for devices that are not provided or not medically necessary.”
Notably, the majority of claims OIG analyzed appeared not to warrant further scrutiny. The report identified potentially problematic claims at less than four percent of the 4,639 medical practices that routinely billed for remote patient monitoring in 2024. OIG’s focus on outliers suggests that most claims appear to have been billed for services that were in line with program requirements.
OIG’s report concludes that the continued increase in Medicare claims and spending for remote patient monitoring services warrants the implementation of measures like the five described in the report to strengthen oversight of these services and minimize program integrity risks.
A copy of OIG’s report is available here.
