Dementia Care Deficiencies: Potential for Better Care for Patients in Hospital

Abstract

ISSN 1758-2024 10.2217/NMT.11.32 © 2011 Future Medicine Ltd Neurodegen. Dis. Manage. (2011) 1(4), 263–266 The basic facts are well established but bear repeating. The population is aging and the majority of hospital beds are now occupied by older people [101]. Approximately 40% of older people in hospital are likely to have dementia [1–3]. People with dementia in hospital are incredibly vulnerable, as they have prolonged hospital stays, experience associated declines in their physical and mental health, which would not be expected given the acute condition alone, and are more likely to be newly admitted to care homes [4]. The excess cost of dementia has been calculated as more than £6 million pounds per year in an average general hospital [5]. The formal recognition that optimal management of dementia is a hospital-specific as well as a general health service and social priority has been a long time coming. Crucially, both the National Dementia Strategy for England and the Coalition Government’s revised dementia plan have emphasized the importance of reversing some of the previously identified failings of hospital care [6,101]. The recent report of the National Audit of Dementia (Care in General Hospitals) provides a useful benchmark against which hospitals can measure their standards of care, and a baseline against which action plans can be developed and improvements in care measured. A total of 210 hospitals from all but one of the 151 NHS organisations providing general hospital services in England and Wales took part in an organizational audit (March–May 2010), supplemented by a review of almost 8000 sets of case notes of patients diagnosed with dementia (discharged September 2009–February 2010) [102]. Standards were divided into three classes: