Home Health & Hospice Week

Watch closely for a FedEx delivery late this month that contains your hospice's statistics on long stays and live discharges.Hospices will receive a Program for Evalua-ting Payment Patterns Electronic Report (PEPPER) in late August, PEPPER contractor TMF Health Quality Institute says on the PEPPER website. The report contains the same statistics that reviewers, authorities, policymakers, and others use."The Hospice PEPPER is a report that summarizes a hospice's Medicare claims data in areas that may be at risk for abuse or improper payment," TMF explains on the PEPPER site. "PEPPER compares a hospice's claims data statistics with aggregate statistics for other hospices in the state, MAC/ FI jurisdiction and the nation."Red flags: "Hospices with high billing patterns (at or above the national 80th percentile) are identified as at risk for improper Medicare payments and are encouraged to ensure that they are complying with Medicare payment policy, that services provided to beneficiaries [...]