Medicare has proposed a rule that would require remote patient monitoring services to be delivered by direct employees of the practice that bills for them, effectively barring the use of contractors. The services involve devices such as connected blood pressure cuffs, scales, and blood glucose meters, which help patients manage conditions like hypertension, diabetes, and heart failure.
UnitedHealth Group, CVS Health, and Kaiser Permanente have all written to the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services opposing the proposal. They argue that focused guardrails would be better than a blanket ban on vendors. All three groups operate both insurance and care-delivery businesses, giving them a direct stake in how the rule is shaped.
The opposition is notable because UnitedHealthcare, UnitedHealth's insurance subsidiary, recently moved to stop paying for most remote patient monitoring, citing insufficient evidence of efficacy. The letter to CMS suggests that even as the company questions the value of RPM, it wants to preserve the option of using contractors when coverage is provided.