Diabetes, depression, and OASIS-C: a guide for home healthcare clinicians.

Depression is significantly higher among elderly adults receiving home healthcare, particularly among adults with Type 2 diabetes. Depression leads to greater medical illness, functional impairment, and chronic pain. Opportunities are often missed to improve mental health and general medical outcomes when mental illness is underrecognized and undertreated. This article discusses the mandate by the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS), Outcome and Assessment Information Set-C (OASIS-C) (2009) for the use of the Patient Health Questionnaire (PHQ-2) to screen for depression in home care patients, with special emphasis on the patient with diabetes.