​Thank you for your question. The intent of CMS 161: Adult Major Depressive Disorder (MDD): Suicide Risk Assessment, is to ensure that patients who have new or recurrent Major Depressive Disorder (MDD) receive a suicide risk assessment screening. For the purposes of this measure, an episode of MDD is considered recurrent if a patient has not had an MDD-related encounter within 105 days. Additionally, per the guidance provided in the measure, if there is a gap of 105 or more days between visits for MDD, this would imply a recurrent episode. To address your question, the lookback period for the prior MDD encounter may fall outside of the measurement period in order to determine if the current encounter for MDD is considered a recurrent episode.

One of the conditions to qualify for Initial population is as below - AND NOT: $MDDEncounters161 < 105 day(s) ends before start of Occurrence A of $MDDEncounters161 This indicates that both the encounters should fall in measurement period, but logically look back encounter may fall out of measurement period. (e.g. Occurrence A of $MDDEncounters161 is on 1st of January-2016 look back encounter ( which ends 105 before start of occurrence A, will fall out of measurement period. Kind request to clarify whether look back encounter can fall out of measurement period or not? Humble request to address this soon as we have certification planned in couple of days.