Fraud Investigation Database (FID)

Overview

The FID is a centralized data entry and reporting system run out of the CMS Data Center that allows CMS to monitor fraudulent activity and payment suspensions related to Medicare and Medicaid providers. The FID was designed to capture fraud investigative data from the point when the potential for Medicare Fraud is substantiated to the final resolution of a case. The FID also tracks Medicare provider payment suspension information and Requests for Information (RFIs) from Law Enforcement Agencies. Currently, Medicare Contractors, State Medicaid Agencies, Law Enforcement Agencies, and CMS Central Office (CO) and Regional Office (RO) staff have access to the FID. Data entry occurs at Medicare Contractor and Medicaid State Agency sites.

Almost all FID data processing takes place online, in real time. The FID application is Web-enabled, which means its content and functionality are delivered through the World Wide Web technology to the application users. FID is accessible through the Internet, protected by multifactor authentication and a host of security measures. Instead of limiting access to the CMS Intranet only, which has caused considerable inconvenience for external users, the FID has a much wider reach to FID’s user communities. All the information transmitted through the Internet is encrypted following applicable standards. As mentioned above, multifactor authentication safeguards the FID application by having two levels of authentication upon user login. All login requests must go through multifactor authentication. The CMS enterprise LDAP server supports the first level of authentication, and the FID Anakam TFA subsystem supports the second level of authentication. Therefore, the availability of FID is dependent upon that of enterprise LDAP as well as Anakam TFA and its supporting services.

Fraud investigation contractors, the largest user community of FID, typically have in-house internal tracking systems for their work on fraud investigations and cases. FID does not integrate or interact with those systems. Instead, users working for these contractors manually enter the data into FID.