News: PEPPER stats released

Imagine sitting down to take an exam and the teacher tells you exactly what’s on the test. Not only that, but the teacher’s putting the answers up on the blackboard. The Program for Evaluating Payment Patterns Electronic Report (PEPPER) is a lot like that.

It outlines areas that are at risk for payment errors (referred to in the report as “target areas”) against national reporting norms. It then compares your individual facility data to others in your state, and within fiscal intermediary/Medicare Administrative Contractor (MAC) region.

The latest statistics for short-term acute care facilities (hospitals) with statistics through the fourth quarter of FY 2014, were recently released. PEPPER is distributed via MyQualityNet to hospital administrators and to those with a basic user account. CDI staff can work with their hospital’s QualityNet administrator to obtain a basic user account. They should ask for “PEPPER recipient” and “file exchange and search” roles.

The PEPPER revised reporting of the “Single CC/MCC” target area to only include DRGs affected by the addition of a CC or MCC. As a result, some hospitals may notice differences in the numerator or denominator of their reports. Visit the newly redesigned PEPPERresources.org to access updated resources for using PEPPER.