depression and anxiety screening for patients with epilepsy

Measure Purpose: Ensure patients are screened for depression and anxiety at every visit. 

The numerator: patient who were screened for both depression* and anxiety* at every office visit

is divided by

the denominator: patients age 12 and older diagnosed with epilepsy

*See measure specifications for complete definitions. The work group recommends use of the PHQ-2 and GAD-2 for screening.

Exclusions are removed from the denominator:

• Patient unable or declines to complete epilepsy screening tool.
• Patient has a diagnosis of depression or anxiety on active problem list. 

Key Phrases

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

• GAD-2 (followed by numerical score) and PHQ-2 (followed by numerical score)
• Patient refuses assessment

Measure Calculation Example

Dr. Peterson had 1,000 patient visits between January 1 and December 31 with a diagnosis of epilepsy at time of visit. This is the denominator.

During 31 of these visits, patients or caregivers declined to answer depression or anxiety screening questions. These 31 visits are removed from the denominator as they meet exclusions.

Of the remaining 969 visits, Dr. Peterson documented depression and anxiety screening results for 412 visits. This is the numerator.

Quality of patient care = 412/(1,000-31). Dr. Peterson has a score of 42.5% for this measure.