Ohio Suicide Prevention Initiative

Last update: October 1, 2020

UnitedHealthcare and Optum are partnering with the Ohio Suicide Prevention Foundation to encourage suicide awareness and increase screening for suicidal behavior in patients in primary care provider practices.

Here are some risk factors related to suicide:

• Health factors, which include mental health conditions (depression, bipolar disorder, schizophrenia), serious chronic medical condition (specifically those involving pain) and traumatic brain injury.
• Environmental factors, like access to lethal means (firearms and drugs), stress (bullying, unemployment), stressful life events (divorce, loss of a loved one) and exposure to violence.
• Historical factors, such as previous suicide attempts, family history of suicide and childhood abuse, neglect or trauma.
• Other factors include being a sexual minority, social isolation, impulsivity, aggressiveness and helplessness.

Some approaches to suicide prevention include teaching coping and problem-solving skills, promoting connectiveness/inclusion and developing and implementing policies that strengthen economic supports. Other means of preventing suicide are reducing access to lethal means among those at risk, including firearms, medications and other potentially dangerous household products.

If you do a suicide screening for one of your patients, you may use CPT 96127 code, which is for a brief emotional and behavioral assessment with scoring and documentation per standardized instrument. This code can be used for a variety of screening tools, including the PHQ-9 for depression, ADHA, anxiety, substance abuse, eating disorders and suicide risk. For depression, please use in conjunction with the ICD-10 diagnosis of Z13.

If you have a patient with potential risk, please call the UnitedHealthcare Provider Line at 877-842-3210 or visit providerexpress.com for screening tools and further steps in helping prevent suicide.