GAO: Most of DoD's telehealth services are concentrated at 7 facilities

Julie Spitzer -

A Government Accountability Office review of the Department of Defense's telehealth offerings found the agency has been slow to expand its virtual visit services.

Roughly 1 percent of all active duty service members received care via telehealth in 2016, and almost all of those visits originated from seven military treatment centers where leaders have encouraged its use. This equates to nearly 60,000 telehealth encounters.

"Four of the seven facilities maintain telebehavioral hubs while two of the facilities maintain portals that support a high volume of synchronous and asynchronous encounters among patients across the United States and overseas," the watchdog report reads.

However, the report noted the 2016 statistics may have been skewed because of underreporting as a result of physicians' insufficient coding.

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