Federal exclusion screening, done for you every month.
If your practice bills Medicare or Medicaid, screening every employee, contractor, and vendor against the exclusion lists every month is standard guidance for keeping your workforce clear of excluded individuals. This is the service for practices who'd rather not run that check themselves.
Checking one name, once? HHS-OIG's own free search — or the free check at cfexclusion.com — is the right tool. It costs nothing, and for a single one-time check, that's genuinely the better choice.
When doing it yourself works, and when it doesn't.
One name, checked once: use the free tools above. There's no reason to pay for that.
Staff, contractors, and vendors, checked regularly, is a different job. Doing it for free means searching the LEIE, then SAM.gov, then up to 16 state Medicaid exclusion lists — per person, every time — with no dated record at the end. Four people that way is up to 72 separate searches and an afternoon of work.
Four full reports from cfexclusion.com, run once, cost $100 and about fifteen minutes, and leave you with dated PDFs for the audit file. This service does that same work automatically, every month, for less than the cheapest full-service alternative found: $460 a month, plus a $200 setup fee, on a one-year contract.
Why monthly.
OIG's own 2013 Updated Special Advisory Bulletin on the Effect of Exclusion states plainly: “OIG updates the LEIE monthly, so screening employees and contractors each month best minimizes potential overpayment and CMP liability.” The same bulletin is equally direct that this is a recommendation, not a legal requirement: “Providers are not required by statute or regulation to check the LEIE.”
CMS has separately encouraged states to require monthly screening of providers' own workforces — first in a 2009 State Medicaid Director Letter, later in regulations that CMS itself clarified “do not mandate States to require their Medicaid providers to screen the providers' employees and contractors against the LEIE each month,” recommending states consider it instead.
Either way, the LEIE itself is replaced every month with no public record kept of what changed, so screening less often means working from an out-of-date copy of the list.
California runs its own list.
California's Medi-Cal Suspended and Ineligible (S&I) List is separate from the federal LEIE. A provider clear on the federal list can still be suspended in California.
Under Welfare & Institutions Code §§14043.6 and 14123, DHCS must suspend a Medi-Cal provider who is convicted of a felony, convicted of a misdemeanor involving fraud or program abuse, suspended from Medicare or Medicaid for any reason, or who loses or surrenders a license to provide health care. Suspension is automatic when any of those events occurs, and suspended providers are not entitled to a hearing under the California Administrative Procedures Act.
Under §14043.61(a), a provider can be suspended for submitting claims connected to someone else's suspended provider — DHCS names billing services, pharmacies, referring providers, employers of a suspended individual, and business partners of a suspended entity, all directly.
DHCS's own guidance instructs providers to cross-reference both the S&I List and the federal LEIE, and warns that the S&I List is not all-inclusive — temporary suspensions, payment withholds, and deactivations don't appear on it at all.
What you get.
Base — $310/month
- Monthly screening: HHS-OIG LEIE, SAM.gov, and the state Medicaid exclusion lists that apply to your practice
- Your full staff, contractor, and vendor roster
- Every possible match is reviewed by hand before anything reaches you
- A dated PDF, ready for an audit file, every month
- No setup fee, no contract, cancel anytime
Direct — $465/month
- Everything in Base
- Screening any time you ask — before a hire, before a vendor contract, when someone leaves — not just the monthly run
- Same-day answers when you send a name
- Guidance on exactly what to verify and where, so confirmation happens on your own systems
See it first.
Want to see the actual report before you subscribe? See a sample report → — the real format, using a real exclusion record, clearly labeled as an example.
C.F.A.I. is a private screening and documentation service. We hold no legal, regulatory, or government authority and do not act on behalf of any agency. We do not provide legal advice. Support is administrative assistance only — the practice remains the responsible party for all hiring, contracting, and compliance decisions. Social Security numbers are entered by your staff, on your systems, directly with OIG; C.F.A.I. does not collect, request, transmit, or store them. We do not guarantee any list is complete, current, or error-free, and screening does not by itself guarantee compliance or protection from penalties. Nothing here is legal advice; consult qualified healthcare-compliance counsel.