Thank you for comments on CMS2v13: Preventive Care and Screening: Screening for Depression and Follow-Up Plan. Responding to your questions/comments in order, the Annual Update (AU) cycle runs from September through May each year, and it concludes with the publication of measures each May for the next performance/reporting period. As such, the AU 2024 cycle concluded with the publication of the 2025 reporting/performance period measures on May 2, 2024. The next AU (2025) cycle will begin this upcoming September (2024) and will conclude in May 2025 with the publication of 2026 reporting/performance period measures. At this time, the measure developer is not planning to make any significant changes to the measure. The measure captures the percentage of patients aged 12 years and older screened for depression on the date of the encounter or up to 14 days prior to the date of the encounter using an age-appropriate standardized depression screening tool AND if positive, a follow-up plan is documented on the date of or up to two days after the date of the qualifying encounter. The title and definition are not contradicting. The screening is performed either to identify a new diagnosis of depression, or if the patient is actively diagnosed with depression, a screening is performed to determine if there needs to be an adjustment in care. For patients with depression, rescreening has shown to be an effective tool for measuring response to therapy, thereby influencing appropriate care adjustments in the treatment of depression. Please refer to the known issue ( EKI-22 : https://oncprojectracking.healthit.gov/support/projects/EKI/issues/EKI-22?filter=allopenissues ), which includes guidance on how to properly code for patients with depression who continue their depression care plan. The Annual Update cycle will continue to include opportunities for vendors and implementers to provide feedback on proposed measure changes. Further information on these opportunities will be made publicly available once the next Annual Update cycle begins later in 2024. As for adding feedback to concerns already documented on eCQM specifications, the best approach is to submit a Jira ticket (or comment on a pre-existing ticket) to the eCQM Issue Tracker ( https://oncprojectracking.healthit.gov/support/projects/CQM), if specific to measure specifications, or other trackers on the ONC Project Tracking System ( https://oncprojectracking.healthit.gov/wiki/olp ).

Including patients with active depression who are already receiving appropriate treatment in the denominator will cause a significant drop in quality performance unless system build and workflows are changed to include extra steps and burdensome click-boxing which add nothing to patient care