A Free Pass – PART 2
And what about first names? The OIG recommends “In order to achieve the most accurate search results, enter only the first few letters of the first and last names.“ Source https://oig.hhs.gov/exclusions/tips.asp
Same advice of just a few letters. So is this issue impacting first names? Yes. Let’s have a hypothetical applicant of Ron. Besides all the variations this could be short form (Ronald, Ronaldo, etc) isn’t this just a few letters and so probably safe to use? Not always. For example, let’s take the last name Moody and upon searching just this last name we can see there are over a dozen individuals excluded with this last name. However, there is only one exclusion with the first name that starts with “R”. You won’t find the exclusion unless you simply enter “R” as the first name. “Ron” would get a free pass.
There are over a hundred people in the United States with the name Ron Moody. It isn’t enough to simply search for Ron Moody since you won’t get the match for further review. Is one of these Ron Moody’s excluded by the Federal OIG? We know. Do you?
As always, be careful who you put your TRUST in for your provider and employee ongoing exclusion monitoring. Have questions? Ask the experts on exclusion monitoring. John Sterling Associates, LLC.