SPCR-12 A PROCESS IMPROVEMENT FOR INCREASING DEPRESSION AND ANXIETY SCREENING IN PATIENTS WITH BRAIN TUMORS

Anxiety and depression are highly prevalent in patients with brain tumors. These conditions significantly affect quality of life and are associated with worsened survival. The Alvord Brain Tumor Center at UW did not have a process to screen patients for anxiety and depression. In response to this, a quality improvement project was developed to identify barriers and facilitators to mood screening and to introduce a new standard process for screening. We formed an interdisciplinary mood screening committee in the clinic to ensure a collaborative process with each profession’s voice accounted. The new process for mood screening consisted of the Patient Health Questionnaire-9 (PHQ-9) and Generalized Anxiety Disorder-7 (GAD-7) being automatically sent to all return patients’ MyChart accounts 24 hours before their scheduled appointment, repeating up to every six months. Upon completion of the questionnaires, the results would immediately file into the patient’s electronic medical record. The new process was implemented and we collected data from clinic visits over two weeks to determine its impact. Of all patients eligible for screening, 18% completed the screenings as a result of the new screening process, compared to the baseline 15% who had already completed the screenings in the last six months at other clinics within the health system, effectively doubling the number of patients in the clinic with mood screening in the last 6 months. Among those with MyChart accounts, the total response rate to the screenings was 24%. The automaticity of the process will help ensure an ongoing baseline standard for patients to be screened. In the future, an additional process will be developed to ensure that those without access to MyChart have equal opportunity for screening and treatment of mood disorders.