Quality Measure Updates & Education: Depression Screenings

COVID-19 has had a significant impact on behavioral health issues including depression, anxiety and substance abuse disorder. Catalyst Health Network is moving toward a more intentional approach to screen for depression in all patients and continuously seek ways to help automate this screening & new performance measures across the network.

In partnership with Cigna, we will work to proactively screen patients to help prevent any further decay of our community’s mental health. To that end, in 2021 we are introducing a new performance metric for completing annual depression screenings for all Cigna patients 12 and older. This is aligned with the American Academy of Pediatrics’s recommendation to conduct depression screenings for kids 12 – 18, as well as the American Academy of Family Practice and the US Preventative Task Force (USPTF) recommended depression screenings for all adults.

The USPTF goes on to say, “screening must be implemented with adequate systems in place to ensure accurate diagnosis, effective treatment and appropriate follow-up.” This is where utilizing an automated care pathway can be a win. Now we just need to build it!

In the meantime, see below for how we’ll be implementing these new depression screenings.