"Nearly One in Four Older Patients Not Screened for Depression" - Janel Miller
Approximately 25 percent of physician-patient encounters at an academic outpatient geriatrics practice did not result in depression screening and follow-up, even though doing so is recommended by the U.S. Preventive Services Task Force, according to data presented by researchers at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai. “First, depression screening and appropriate referral is a quality measure for the Merit-based Incentive Payment System and we wanted to better investigate provider screening practices to improve our metrics,” said Kelly Cummings, MD, geriatric and palliative medicine fellow at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai. She added, “Second, referrals to our practice’s team-based “Improving mood and promoting access to collaborative treatment program” that integrates depression treatment into primary care were lower than expected, so we decided to look into if referrals were low possibly due to inadequate depression screening process.”
— Kelly J. Cummings, MD, Geriatric and Palliative Medicine Fellow, Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai]