Short-term acute care PEPPER report is available through CMS identity controls

What happened

The October 1 newsletter announces the second-quarter FY 2026 Program for Evaluating Payment Patterns Electronic Report for short-term acute-care hospitals. CMS describes using the report to review billing data, identify patterns needing review, flag possible undercoding or overcoding, monitor risk, and examine trends such as longer stays. These are uses for focused internal analysis. A billing-pattern signal alone does not establish that a particular claim is improper or that an organization owes a repayment.

Authorized officials, access managers, and staff end users can download their own organization's report from the PEPPER Portal. Staff users request the PEPPER business function through CMS Identity and Access, and an authorized official or access manager must approve that access. CMS also describes requesting the Comparative Billing Report function at the same time and supplies training and assistance links. Access authorization therefore needs to precede facility-specific analysis; the public availability notice is neither the hospital's private report nor an attestation that its results have been reviewed.

Why it matters

PEPPER is a prospective audit signal, not an audit determination or repayment demand. Hospital outliers can inform a focused internal review.

Implementation playbook

1. Confirm authorized report access, review hospital-specific outlier areas and choose documentation samples with Compliance. Compliance · Due 2026-10-09
2. Record the applicability assessment and validate the affected workflow with its operational owner. This is an internal review target, not an additional statutory deadline. Compliance · Due 2026-10-12

Sources

• MLN Connects, October 1, 2026Official · CMS · 2026-10-01 · Source review 2026-10-11