Has COVID-19 affected dementia diagnosis rates in England?

Jemma Hazan; Kathy Y Liu; Jeremy D Isaacs; Alistair Burns; Robert Howard

doi:10.1002/gps.5976

Has COVID-19 affected dementia diagnosis rates in England?

Int J Geriatr Psychiatry. 2023 Jul;38(7):e5976. doi: 10.1002/gps.5976.

Authors

Jemma Hazan¹, Kathy Y Liu¹, Jeremy D Isaacs^{2

3}, Alistair Burns⁴, Robert Howard¹

Affiliations

¹ Division of Psychiatry, University College London, London, UK.
² St George's University Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust, London, UK.
³ St George's, University of London, London, UK.
⁴ University of Manchester, Manchester, UK.

Abstract

Background: The COVID-19 pandemic impacted on the provision of care and routine activity of all National Health Service (NHS) services. While General Practitioner referrals to memory services in England have returned to pre-pandemic levels, the estimated dementia diagnosis rate (DDR) fell by 5.4% between March 2020 and February 2023.

Methods: In this paper we explore whether this reduction is accurate or is an artefact of the way the NHS collects data.

Results: We explore the processes that may have affected national dementia diagnosis rates during and following the COVID-19 pandemic.

Conclusions: We discuss what action could be taken to improve the DDR in the future.

Keywords: COVID-19; assessment; dementia; diagnosis; memory service.

Publication types

Research Support, Non-U.S. Gov't

MeSH terms

COVID-19 Testing
COVID-19* / diagnosis
COVID-19* / epidemiology
Dementia* / diagnosis
Dementia* / epidemiology
England / epidemiology
Humans
Pandemics
State Medicine

Grants and funding

MR/S021418/1/MRC_/Medical Research Council/United Kingdom