Eli's Hospice Insider

Are you running periodic checks of your employees against the OIG’s excluded list? If not, you could pay a big price.

Case in point: Hospice by the Sea in Boca Raton, Fla., paid nearly $430,000 after self-disclosing that it employed an individual excluded from Federal health care programs, the HHS Office of Inspector General says in a recent post to its Civil Monetary Penalties website.

In another recently revealed case, Hospicare and Palliative Care Services of Tompkins County in Ithaca, N.Y., paid more than $10,700 for the same violation, the OIG says. Hospicare also self-disclosed the conduct.

And in Pennsylvania, health care staffing agency ePeople Healthcare paid more than $10,000 to settle charges that it employed an excluded individual, the OIG reports. “The excluded individual was a licensed practical nurse who provided items and services to nursing facilities that were billed to Federal health care programs,” the OIG elaborates.

Links to the OIG’s online searchable database and other exclusions resources are at http://oig.hhs.gov/exclusions/index.asp.