Improving Depression Screening in Primary Care: A Quality Improvement Initiative

The increase in depression during the COVID-19 pandemic underscores the importance of systematic approaches to identify individuals with mental health concerns. Primary care is often underutilized for depression screening, and it is not clear how practices can successfully increase screening rates. This study describes a quality improvement initiative to increase depression screening in five Family Medicine clinics. The initiative included four Plan-Do-Study-Act cycles that resulted in implementing a standardized workflow for depression screening, collaborative efforts with health information technology to prompt providers to perform screening via the medical record, delivering educational materials for providers and clinic staff and conducting follow-up education. Between September 2020 and April 2021 there were 23,745 clinic encounters with adult patients that were analyzed to determine whether patients were up-to-date on depression screening following their visit. A multi-level logistic regression model was constructed to determine the changes in likelihood of a patient being up-to-date on screening over the study period, while controlling for patient demographics and comorbidities. The average proportion of up-to-date patients increased from 61.03% in September 2020 to 82.33% in April 2021. Patients aged 65+ and patients with comorbidities were more likely to be up-to-date on screening; patients with telemedicine visits had lower odds of being up-to-date on depression screening. Overall, this paper describes a feasible, effective intervention to increase depression screening in a primary care setting. Additionally, we discuss lessons learned and recommendations to inform the design of future interventions.