​​Thank you for your inquiry regarding CMS2v11: Preventive Care and Screening: Screening for Depression and Follow-Up Plan. In order to satisfy the follow-up requirement for a patient screening positive for depression, the eligible clinician MUST provide and document one of the below follow-up actions: Referral to a provider for additional evaluation and assessment to formulate a follow-up plan for a positive depression screen Pharmacological interventions Other interventions or follow-up for the diagnosis or treatment of depression Based on the measure guidance, a referral should be to a practitioner who is qualified to diagnose and treat depression, and per the measure specification, the "Referral for Adolescent Depression" (2.16.840.1.113883.3.526.3.1570) and "Referral for Adult Depression" (2.16.840.1.113883.3.526.3.1571) value sets include codes that identify acceptable referrals that would meet numerator criteria. Upon reviewing the codes within these value sets, a referral to a primary care physician is NOT present in either value set. You can review codes included in each value set on the Value Set Authority Center (VSAC) website at https://vsac.nlm.nih.gov . Therefore, in the example that you provided, documentation of a referral to a primary care physician does NOT meet numerator criteria. Please review the measure guidance and value sets above for acceptable referrals following a positive depression screen.

We have patients who only come for our specialty practices. We want to screen those patients for depression, but the specialist will not address their positive score; they will refer them back to PCP. In this case, we can receive a credit for Prev-12 measure as an organization for the follow-up part.