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Check OIG List or Face HUGE Fines
You are REQUIRED to check the Office of the Inspector General’s (OIG) Exclusions list of individuals identified as those who cannot fill, process, or otherwise deal with government programs. Due to government programs it protects, a large portion of the list consists of pharmacies, pharmacists, pharmacy technicians and nurses.
In essence, this simply means that no Federal Government program, including Medicare and Medicaid, will pay for … “any items or services furnished, ordered, or prescribed by an excluded individual or entity.” They issue very heavy fines and stiff monetary penalties for hiring anyone on the list.
You MUST check the list on ALL your employees. Simply go to http://exclusions.oig.hhs.gov/ and put in your employee names. DOCUMENT that you conducted this search, AT LEAST yearly. The risk is too large to miss this important task in independent, chain and hospital pharmacies.
In addition to the OIG, Social Security can also fine any pharmacy or business that practices in fraudulent business actions or hires an employee whose name is on the OIG list. A pharmacy owner in Georgia was fined $400,000 after hiring a pharmacist who was on the OIG list. The fine was the total cost of all the medications the hired pharmacist had helped to dispense, plus the dispensing fee. OIG could have also imposed an additional $10,000 fine for each medication dispensed by the excluded pharmacist.
