Impact of untimely access to formal care on costs and quality of life in community dwelling people with dementia
Abstract
BACKGROUNDAccess to formal care is not always timely and a better understanding on the impact of untimely access is needed.OBJECTIVETo examine, from a societal perspective, the impact of untimely access to formal care in terms of total costs and quality of life over one year in community dwelling people with dementia.METHODSWithin the Actifcare study, needs, resource use, and quality of life were observed for one year in a cohort of 451 community dwelling people with dementia in 8 European countries. Untimely access to care was operationalized as having at least one unmet need for care identified by the Camberwell Assessment of Need for the Elderly (CANE) instrument. Two regression models were built for both total costs and quality of life measured by the EQ-5D-5L, one using sum of unmet needs and one using a predefined selection of need items.RESULTSUnmet needs were not associated with higher total costs but they were associated with a lower quality of life of people with dementia. Of all CANE items, only an unmet need for "company" was significantly related to lower total costs.CONCLUSIONTotal costs did not seem to differ between participants with unmet and met needs. Only few associations between specific unmet needs and costs and quality of life were found. Furthermore, quality of life of people with dementia decreases when multiple unmet needs are experienced, indicating that assessing and meeting needs is important to improve quality of life.
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Date
2018
Type
Article
Subject
Community mental health service, Dementia, Quality of life
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Citation
Janssen, N., Handels, R. L., Sköldunger, A., Woods, B., Jelley, H., Tudor Edwards, R., Orrell, M., Selbæk, G., Røsvik, J., Gonçalves-Pereira, M., et al. (2018). Impact of untimely access to formal care on costs and quality of life in community dwelling people with dementia. Journal of Alzheimer's Disease, 66 (3), pp.1165-1174.