Complete Story
06/01/2026
CMS Relaunching PEPPER Reports in June: Prepare Now for Access and Review
CMS has announced that Hospice and Home Health PEPPER reports are expected to return in June 2026 after being paused since 2024. Providers should begin preparing now to ensure the right team members can access reports once they are released.
PEPPER (Program for Evaluating Payment Patterns Electronic Report) provides provider specific Medicare utilization data and highlights target areas commonly associated with improper payment risk and utilization trends.
Importantly, PEPPER is not an audit and does not automatically indicate billing concerns or noncompliance. It is intended as an educational and monitoring tool to help organizations better understand their own data and identify areas that may benefit from internal review.
Why it matters:
As oversight activity continues to increase across hospice and home health, PEPPER gives organizations an opportunity to proactively understand their own data before outside review occurs.
For providers, this may help identify:
- utilization trends
- outlier patterns
- areas for internal auditing
- opportunities to strengthen documentation and billing alignment
CMS indicated reports will be available through the PEPPER Portal.
What to do:
- Confirm who serves as your organization’s Authorized Official (AO) or Access Manager (AM)
- Verify staff who need access are set up as Staff End Users (SEUs) in the CMS Identity & Access Management (I&A) System
- Request the PEPPER business function under your organization.
- Obtain approval from your organization’s AO or AM (only AOs and AMs can approve SEU access).
- Once approved, log in to the PEPPER Portal using the same credentials to download your organization’s PEPPER.
- Plan internal review workflows now so reports can be evaluated promptly once available
- Consider including PEPPER review as part of your regular compliance and leadership reporting processes
Bottom line: Don’t wait until PEPPER reports are released to discover access issues. Preparing now can help your team use the reports proactively rather than reactively.