Patients ‘not getting proper follow-up care’ after dementia diagnosis – charity

A LARGE number of patients are not getting the follow-up care they are entitled to after a dementia diagnosis, a charity has said.

New analysis by charity Age UK found that thousands of people with the condition do not have a current care plan – a document which sets out what care the person is having and contingency plans for the future.

The charity said that such plans are the “gateway to followup support from the NHS” and ensure joined-up support from other bodies such as social care services.

Patients should have a regularly reviewed plan which reflects the changes in their condition and NHS England has said that there is an “urgent need” to ensure every person who has dementia has an individual care plan, which is reviewed annually.

But following analysis of data from 7,185 GP practices in England, the charity found that of 458,461 people who had a recorded diagnosis of dementia in November 2017, only 282,573 had a new care plan or at least one care plan review on record in the last year.

In 2015, there were 850,000 people with dementia in the UK and by 2025 the number is expected to hit one million as the population ages.

Caroline Abrahams, Age UK’s charity director, said: “Our analysis suggests that many people with dementia are losing out on the NHS follow-up support they need and are supposed always to be offered, once they have received their diagnosis.”

Meanwhile, doctors have discovered that drugs used to treat rheumatoid arthritis could halve the risk of patients developing dementia.

A team led by Professor Chris Edwards, of the NIHR Southampton Biomedical Research Centre, and colleagues at the University of Oxford, analysed the records of more than 5,800 people living with the condition across the UK.

Prof Edwards said the discovery shows that DMARDs could provide a potential new dementia treatment.