CMS relaunches PEPPER for short-term acute care hospitals

CMS recently relaunched the Program for Evaluating Payment Patterns Electronic Report (PEPPER) for short-term acute care hospitals, restoring these facilities’ access to a valuable data tool that assists with claim accuracy.

First developed in 2002, PEPPER can be used by facilities to identify problematic billing patterns, areas that require additional auditing or monitoring, under-coded or over-coded diagnosis-related groups, length of stay trends, and more. CMS paused the program in 2023 to make improvements, but it released a limited version of the report in August 2025.

Only authorized officials (AO) and access managers (AM) with active Identify & Access Management System accounts can download their report from the PEPPER Portal at this time, according to CMS. Staff end users are expected to gain access in April 2026, but until then, they can coordinate with their AO or AM to get their report.

Revenue integrity professionals at short-term acute care hospitals can view CMS’ PEPPER user guide for more information.