LEIE (List of Excluded Individuals/Entities)
The LEIE is the HHS Office of Inspector General's published list of individuals and entities currently excluded from federal health care programs. A provider checks it to confirm that the people and businesses it employs or contracts with are not excluded, because federal programs pay nothing for items or services an excluded person furnishes.
Updated
The List of Excluded Individuals/Entities (LEIE) is the database the HHS Office of Inspector General (OIG) maintains of every individual and entity currently excluded from participation in the federal health care programs. OIG updates it monthly and publishes it two ways — a free online search and a downloadable data file — so a practice can check a single name or screen an entire roster of staff, contractors, and vendors against it.
The LEIE matters because federal health care programs make no payment for any item or service an excluded person furnishes, orders, or prescribes. It is therefore the authoritative source a billing operation checks to confirm that the individuals and organizations it works with are eligible to be paid for, directly or indirectly, by those programs.
In practice
A match on name alone is not conclusive — OIG's online search lets a user confirm a potential match against a Social Security number or Employer Identification Number, and confirming identity is part of a defensible screen. Checking the LEIE before hiring or contracting, and rechecking it on a routine schedule, is a standard compliance control; because OIG refreshes the list monthly, screening against the current version is what keeps a practice from unknowingly billing for an excluded person's work.
Being listed is not permanent, but coming off the list is not automatic: an excluded party is reinstated only after it applies to OIG and reinstatement is granted, so a name that once cleared can still be listed later and a name listed today may clear in a future update.
Commonly confused with
- Provider exclusion: An exclusion is the federal action that bars a person from the programs; the LEIE is the list OIG publishes of who is currently excluded. Screening the LEIE is how a provider discovers an exclusion.
- SAM.gov (System for Award Management): SAM.gov is a separate, government-wide exclusion and debarment system run by the General Services Administration. The LEIE is OIG's health-care-specific list; some organizations screen both.