Thank you for your inquiry regarding CMS2v11 Preventive Care and Screening: Screening for Depression and Follow-Up Plan. The intent of this measure is to screen for depression in patients who have never had a diagnosis of depression or bipolar disorder prior to the eligible encounter used to evaluate the numerator. First, while other mental illness may have an impact on screening for depression, the Expert Work Group for this measure noted that all patients, including those with other known psychiatric diagnoses such as schizophrenia, could still be screened for depression and, if positive, a follow-up plan documented on the date of the eligible encounter. In the case of your example, suicide risk is high among patients with schizophrenia and continuing to include these patients does not have a detrimental impact on measure reporting. Second, per the measure specification, patients meet denominator exception criteria if the provider documents that the patient declined to participate as per the "Patient Declined" value set (OID: 2.16.840.1.113883.3.526.3.1582) or the provider documents a medical reason for not screening the patient for depression (e.g., cognitive, functional, or motivational limitations that may impact accuracy of results; patient is in an urgent or emergent situation where time is of the essence and to delay treatment would jeopardize the patient's health status), as contained in the "Medical Reason" value set (OID: 2.16.840.1.113883.3.526.3.1007). You can review codes included in the value sets on the Value Set Authority Center (VSAC) website at https://vsac.nlm.nih.gov . We hope this helps.

Good afternoon, Our project team received the inquiry below from an external partner regarding the following measure: Preventative Care and Screening: Screening for Depression and Follow-Up (CMS2v11). We would appreciate any insight your team is able to provide on this inquiry.