What You Don’t Know About Your Vendors Could Hurt You

How well do you know your vendors? I mean really know them!

Before you write that check to pay their next invoice, you should be aware that making payments to any vendor who is on the OIG exclusion list is strictly prohibited by the OIG, if you receive any payments from Federal health care programs.

Paying that excluded vendor could result in heavy fines and penalties from the OIG and could even result in your company being excluded from further participation in Medicare and/or Medicaid. You see, the OIG places the burden squarely on you if, in their determination, you “knew or should have known” of the exclusion.

You must also be aware that payments are also prohibited even if the vendor entity is not excluded but if anyone with more than a 5% ownership in the vendor company is currently on the List of Excluded Individuals and Entities (LEIE).

So, if all you do currently is check credit ratings and other financial information on your vendors without screening them and their ownership monthly against the LEIE and 50 individual state databases for exclusion, you a placing your company at a very high exposure risk for an OIG audit and potentially severe fines, penalties and possible further sanctions.

A thorough vendor credentialing program to include not only financial information verification but on-going monitoring for exclusion in any Federal or state program, as well as professional license verification and monitoring is necessary for complete OIG/CMS exclusion compliance. And their guidelines and requirements for Medicare and Medicaid health care providers like you are constantly changing and getting more and more complicated. And the responsibility is yours…not your vendors, if you receive any payments from any Federal health care programs!

Fortunately for you, ExclusionALERT provides our clients with guaranteed 100% OIG/CMS exclusion compliance and we back that up with our exclusive Sanction Shield of protection providing with our clients with 100% liability coverage!

By utilizing our ExclusionALERT family of exclusion monitoring, verification and certification services, our clients no longer have to worry about non-compliance and they eliminate their potential exposure to any OIG-imposed sanctions. Instead, they can spend their time and efforts on doing what they do best…providing the highest quality health care services to their patients.