The lists your screening must cover

The federal lists

The OIG List of Excluded Individuals/Entities (LEIE) comes first: Medicare, Medicaid and every other federal health care program do not pay for items or services from a person or organization on it. OIG republishes it every month.

SAM.gov exclusions come second. They record debarments and suspensions across the federal government. Someone can be on SAM.gov and not on the LEIE, and the other way round, so a complete program checks both.

State Medicaid lists

Most states publish their own Medicaid exclusion, sanction or termination list, in their own format and on their own schedule. A state can act against a provider who is not on the LEIE, so an organization that bills a state’s Medicaid program checks that state’s list.

Lists differ widely. Some are spreadsheets, some PDFs, some web pages; some include terminations and payment suspensions, some only exclusions. A few states publish no list at all, and there the federal lists are the check.

Lists some programs add

Depending on what you do, you may add the FDA debarment lists, the Treasury OFAC sanctions list or licensing board actions. The CMS Preclusion List matters to Medicare Advantage plans and Part D sponsors, but it is not public, so no outside tool can screen it.

How to check what a tool really covers

A count of lists says little on its own. What matters is which lists are live today and when each was last retrieved. Ask for a coverage page that names every source with its retrieval date, and check that the states you work in are on it.

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