The LEIE is a list the HHS Office of Inspector General publishes of people and organizations that federal health care programs will not pay for. Its full name is the List of Excluded Individuals and Entities, and if you work in compliance at a healthcare organization it is the single list you are most often asked about.
This page explains what it is, who is on it, how often it changes, and — the part that matters most in practice — what a name on it does and does not tell you.
What the list is
The OIG has statutory authority to bar people and organizations from taking part in Medicare, Medicaid, and other federal health care programs, under sections 1128 and 1156 of the Social Security Act. The LEIE is the public record of who is currently subject to that action.
It is a list of names, not a database of findings about individuals. Each record carries the person's or organization's name, a general category, the legal basis for the action, the date it took effect, and the state where the person lived or the organization did business at the time.
Who is on it
The authorities fall into two groups.
Mandatory. The OIG has no discretion here. A conviction for a program-related crime, for patient abuse or neglect, for a felony involving health care fraud, or for a felony relating to controlled substances leads to a bar of at least five years.
Permissive. These are discretionary and cover a wider range: licence revocation or suspension, default on health education loans, submission of claims for services that were not medically necessary, and others. Terms vary.
The full set of authorities, with the statutory citation for each, is published on the OIG's own site.
What it means when a name is on the list
The effect is a payment rule, and it is broader than most people expect. No federal health care program payment may be made for items or services furnished by a person on the list, or directed or prescribed by a listed physician (42 C.F.R. § 1001.1901). The OIG's 2013 Special Advisory Bulletin sets out how far that reaches: it covers administrative and management services that never touch a patient — billing, accounting, strategic planning, IT support, staff training — and it covers salary and benefits paid from federal program funds.
That is why the list is a compliance concern for a whole organization rather than only for clinical roles. The prohibition is about what a federal program pays for, not about what job someone holds.
Two other things follow from the same rule. It applies whether payment is itemized, bundled, or made through a prospective payment system. And it applies even when the federal payment goes to someone else — a contractor's arrangement can carry the exposure to the organization that billed.
How often it changes
The OIG replaces the downloadable LEIE file every month, and publishes monthly supplement files showing what changed. Records come off the list as well as going on: a term of exclusion ending does not restore participation on its own, because reinstatement is not automatic — a person has to apply for it (42 C.F.R. § 1001.3001) — but when reinstatement is granted, the record is removed from the file.
So the LEIE is not a document you read once. A check tells you what the list said on the day you checked, against the version you checked, which is why the date and the version of a check are part of the answer rather than metadata about it.
What a name on the list does not tell you
This is the part that catches people out. The public file carries limited identifying detail. A name that resembles one of your records is a potential match — verification required, and nothing more: different people share names, and a name comparison on its own cannot establish that two records describe the same person.
The OIG built the answer to this into its own online searchable database, which has a verification step that confirms a result against a Social Security number or an Employer Identification Number. That confirmation happens on the OIG's tool. It is not something a screening vendor should be holding, and Exclia never asks you for a Social Security number.
If you are looking at a potential match right now, read what to do when you find a potential match, which walks through the confirmation step by step.
The LEIE is not the only list
Two more sources matter for most organizations.
SAM. The System for Award Management carries the government-wide record of parties barred from federal procurement and non-procurement programs — a wider net than health care, and a separate check.
State Medicaid lists. Most state Medicaid programs keep their own list, and many state provider agreements require a monthly search of it alongside the federal ones. The obligation, the list, and the penalties differ by state; our state requirement guides set out what each published state asks for, with the state's own sources linked.
Checking one name
If you want to see what the federal lists currently say about a single name, our free checker searches the LEIE and SAM and shows you the exact list version it read and when that version was retrieved. It is one name on one day — useful for answering a question, and not a substitute for the monthly check a provider agreement asks for.