One of the things I’ve been thinking about lately is the importance of making sure we are enhancing our data products with worthwhile data sources that are within the scope of our product. We were careful when originally building our datasets, setting forth rules for why we’ve included some sources and why others did not fit our criteria. (For additional insight into how we assembled our healthcare board actions dataset, check out my post last year on various board action data sources). It also occurred to me that we haven’t spent much time talking publicly about our source collection methodology. Particularly why we collect the sources we do.
One of the rules we agreed upon from the outset was that if we included a data source in our product set we needed to have a valid reason for doing so. It needed to add something. We didn’t want to add a source if it didn’t provide critical value for our customers.
We’ve only added sources as it made sense or as requested by our customers. Even if it is requested we ask ourselves the question: does this source provide value for those performing healthcare compliance searches?
We have a number of sources outside the OIG’s List of Excluded Individuals and Entities (LEIE), SAM.gov, and the various state Medicaid exclusion sources that provide such value. While there are some non-board action state sources that fall into this category, many of the sources we deem valuable are published by the Federal Government.
The Federal Government actively publishes reports about individuals and organizations against whom they have taken action or are currently taking action. While many of these reporting sources aren’t as stringent in their restrictions as the exclusions set forth in the LEIE, much of the information is at the very least noteworthy. In other cases, it can be very important.
Of particular note is the DEA Administrative Actions Against Registrants. This source lists out by year the DEA’s administrative actions and goes back as far as 2000.
As an experiment, I ran searches on five of the more recent names published at this source and only found two of them with hits in the LEIE. All of the others were not in LEIE or SAM.gov.
In each of these cases, the practitioner’s DEA Certificate of Registration was either revoked or denied.
That’s important information to know.
This is why we include sources like the DEA Administrative Actions Against Registrants. The value of the data helps our customers know vital information upon which they can base their decisions. There is a strong chance some of these individuals will make it into the LEIE or SAM.gov but why wait for them to show up on one of these lists before knowing that their DEA Certificate of Registration has already been revoked?
As always, if you have specific questions about compliance, data availability, the nuances of a particular source, or the best place to find the data you’re looking for, please don’t hesitate to reach out to me directly at ddecker@typhoondata.com or to call me at 800-780-5901, Extension 103.
