News: PEPPER for second quarter 2017 released for short-term acute care hospitals

CMS released a new Program for Evaluating Payment Patterns Electronic Report (PEPPER) with statistics from the second quarter fiscal year (FY) 2017 for short-term acute care hospital.

The reports, distributed by TMF Health Quality Institute under contract with CMS, summarize facility-specific data statistics for Medicare services that may be at risk for improper payments. Facilities can then use the data to support internal auditing and monitoring, according to CMS. 

The reports were distributed this week through a QualityNet secure file exchange to hospital QualityNet Administrators and user accounts with the PEPPER recipient role, CMS says.

Each PEPPER release summarizes data statistics from specific hospitals for MS-DRGs and discharges at risk for improper payments.

“If you’re a high outlier on any of the focus areas, you might be receiving improper payments and could be at risk,” said Kurt Hopfensperger, MD, JD, on a June 27 webinar regarding PEPPER. “On the other hand, if you’re a low outlier, you may have an opportunity for improvement, which is where CDI could come in.”

Editor’s note: To learn how other facilities have used their PEPPERs, click here. To read about how best to use PEPPER, click here. For information about using PEPPER to search for CDI targets, click here. To listen to the June 27 webinar, click here. To view a presentation about using PEPPER to revitalize your CDI program, click here.