VSys One: Volunteer Management Software

Updating Exclusions File

In September of 2016, the location and format of the HHS exclusions database was changed. This change left VSys One pointing to the older version of the file and with no ability to access a new one. VSys One version 3.1.0.171 and higher have been updated to use the newer location and data format. In order to update the database, you'll need to use a version of VSys that's at least this recent. Once the HHS database has been updated in VSys, older versions of VSys can use the updated data, which means that you can continue to deploy older versions in production while using a new one solely to download the new HHS updates.

On the left side of the screen VSys shows the current status of the downloaded exclusions file:

In this example the file was:

• HHS last updated on August 20, 2015. (This means that the most recent record in the file has that date. This has nothing to do with when the file was last downloaded.)
• HHS last downloaded by VSys on September 2, 2015.
• SAM last updated August 12, 2015. (This means that the most recent record in the file has that date. This has nothing to do with when the file was last downloaded.)
• Contains 115,007 excluded individuals. Because VSys does not track organizations, e.g. pharmacies, VSys ignores records in the LEIE file which contain only company names and not the names of individuals.

HHS exclusions file

You can update the HHS exclusions file in one of two ways:

Update from HHS website: Clicking this link tells VSys to attempt to automatically download the exclusions file from https://oig.hhs.gov/exclusions/downloadables/UPDATED.csv and use that to update its internal exclusions file. This is the preferred method.

Update from file: If you're unable to download the exclusions file directly from the oig.hhs.gov website,

1. Download the file from another machine or network,
2. Put that file where VSys can see it and click on Update from file.

VSys expects the following columns in the updates file: LASTNAME, FIRSTNAME, MIDNAME, BUSNAME, GENERAL, SPECIALTY, UPIN, NPI, DOB, ADDRESS, CITY, STATE, ZIP, EXCLTYPE, EXCLDATE, REINDATE, WAIVERDATE, WVRSTATE.

SAM exclusions file

The SAM exclusions file cannot be updated automatically by VSys due to restrictions on their website. Updating it within VSys is very straightforward:

1. Go to www.sam.gov in your browser.
2. Click on Data Access at the top.
3. Scroll down to Exclusions Extract Data Package.
4. Download the latest complete file.
5. In VSys, in the HHS/Medicare exclusions tool, click on Update SAM from file.
6. Select the file that was downloaded.