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Devices that remotely transmit people's weight, blood pressure, and glucose levels to physicians exploded in popularity during the COVID-19 pandemic, as people were socially isolating, according to a study published September 6 in Health Affairs. This uptick was not evenly distributed, however, with a small number of primary care physicians generating the most billing claims.

The idea is that physicians will adjust patient care plans in response to these data feeds from remote patient monitoring (RPM) devices, the researchers said, adding that people with multiple chronic conditions, such as hypertension or uncontrolled type 2 diabetes, might benefit the most. But the researchers did not find pinpoint targeting of RPM services to people at greater risk.

At least one observer noted that the billing distribution was so lopsided—0.1 percent of providers in this sample submitted 69 percent of the claims—that it could indicate fraud.

"People were probably billing these codes without actually doing very much real remote patient monitoring," Joseph Ross, MD, MHS, a professor of medicine and public health at Yale University, New Haven, Connecticut, who was not involved in the analysis but studies trends in clinical adoption of tools such as RPM devices.

But the authors of the new study said that misconduct was unlikely and pointed to other explanations for the findings. Head over to Medscape to read the full story.