Administrative Memos

200507

FROM: Theodore O. Will, Chief Executive Officer
DATE: Sep 28, 2005
SUBJECT: Hospital Payment Monitoring Program (HPMP) Electronic News Brief
IPRO CONTACTS:

Kathy Terry, Ph.D., Senior Director, Data Analysis & Evaluation, Medicare/Federal Health Care Assessment, 516-209-5226.
Renato L. Estrella, MS, RHIA, Director, H.I.M., Medicare/Federal Health Care Assessment, 516-209-5674.

As the Medicare Quality Improvement Organization for New York State, IPRO is pleased to provide you with a hard copy of the first electronic monthly Hospital Payment Monitoring Program (HPMP) electronic news brief. Each month you will find new items of interest to assist you in your payment error reduction efforts.

As can be seen in Attachment I, this first e-newsbrief provides details on the newly released "HPMP Compliance Workbook". This workbook, compiled by TMF Health Quality Institute; the HPMP Quality Improvement Organization Support Center (QIOSC), provides practical guidance, suggestions and helpful tools for hospitals seeking to develop, update or strengthen their compliance program structures and processes.

The second item on the e-newsbrief provides detail on upcoming national training on PEPPER (Program for Evaluating Payment Patterns Electronic Report). PEPPER is an electronic reporting tool that provides summary statistics of administrative claims data on CMS target areas (areas likely to have payment errors due to billing, DRG/coding and/or admission necessity issues). Hospitals can use PEPPER to review their data for the current quarters and the previous three fiscal years for each of the areas targeted for improvement by CMS, and compare their performance to that of the other acute-care PPS hospitals within their state.

For your convenience, we have pre-registered all HPMP and IPRO liaisons to automatically receive the monthly e-newsbrief. If you have not received the e-newsbrief for September and/or would like to register additional staff, you may do so at http://lists.ipro.us:81/read/all_forums/subscribe?name=hpmp-announce.

Contact information for all items in the e-newsbrief is included within each article. If you have any questions or comments about the electronic newsbrief, please contact Dr. Kathy Terry, Sr. Director, Data Analysis & Evaluation, Medicare/Federal Health Care Assessment at 516-209-5226 or Renato Estrella, Director, Health Information Management, Medicare/Federal Health Care Assessment at 516-209-5674.