2026 Hospice PEPPER Report

PEPPER (Program for Evaluating Payment Patterns Electronic Report) is a CMS-sponsored compliance and benchmarking tool that provides hospice-specific Medicare claims data to identify billing patterns that may indicate a higher risk for improper Medicare payments. The report compares a hospice's performance with state, MAC jurisdiction, and national percentiles to help organizations identify areas requiring further review and internal auditing. PEPPER is intended to support compliance programs and as proactive monitoring rather than determining whether improper payments actually occurred.