Did you know: If you have Medicaid, you can ask your pediatrician to screen you for postpartum depression during your first year of well-child visits.
Knowledge is POWER!
Nevada Medicaid reimburses Physicians, Special Clinics, Advanced Practice Registered Nurses (APRNs) and Physician’s Assistants (PAs) for postpartum depression health risk assessments for mothers of a covered child as a service billed to the child’s Medicaid, on its own claim line as CPT Code 96161, up to three times.
California Medi-Cal Providers of well-child care can submit claims for maternal depression screenings up to four times during an infant’s first year of life (typically aligned with the 1-, 2-, 4-, and 6-month Bright Futures well-child visits). Like Nevada, these are billed under the infant’s Medi-Cal identification using CPT Code 96161 (modifier EP) for the screening, together with HCPCS code G8431 (positive screen) or G8510 (negative screen), modifier HD, to record the result. (See San Francisco Health Plan’s maternal depression screening tip sheet.)
In case they don’t have an Edinburgh Postnatal Depression Scale handy, you can ask them to use this PDF provided by UCSF’s provider library of screening tools:
Sometimes, we have to be our own health advocates. We can. And we will!
Plus, you never know how many other mamas you could help by educating your doctors about screening for postpartum depression!
