Clinical depression screening for patients with MS

Measure purpose: Monitor patients with multiple sclerosis (MS) for depression

The numerator: Patients aged 12 years and older with MS who were screened for clinical depression using an age appropriate standardized depression screening tool at least once in the past 12 months

is divided by

the denominator: All patients aged 12 years or older with a diagnosis of MS.

Exclusions are removed from the denominator:

• Patient unable or declines to complete a screening instrument

Key Phrases

Examples of key phrases you could use to meet the measure include:

• Beck Depression Inventory/BDI (followed by numerical score)
• PHQ-9 (followed by numerical score)
• MS Depression Rating Scale (followed by numerical score)
• Declined to complete depression scale

Measure Calculation Example

Dr. Smith sees 100 patients aged 12 years and older diagnosed with MS between January 1 and December 31. This is the denominator.

Two patients decline to complete depression questionnaires. These two patients are removed from the denominator as exclusions.

Of the remaining 98 patients, 33 patients had clinical depression screening completed in the measurement period. This is the numerator.

Quality of patient care = 33/98 (100-2). Dr. Smith has a score of 33.7% for this measure.