Getting diagnosed with Alzheimer’s disease or another kind of dementia is never pleasant.
Now scientists from the University of Michigan found that when and how someone’s cognitive issues come to light can also make a big difference in their health care costs.
The research is published in the Journal of the American Geriatrics Society and was conducted by Geoffrey Hoffman et al.
In the study, the team used data from 2,779 older adults who received a formal diagnosis of Alzheimer’s disease or another dementia.
They also used data from 2,318 participants whose screening test results strongly suggested they had developed dementia since the last time they took the same screening.
The analysis shows that overall Medicare costs jumped from about $5,400 in the three months before a dementia diagnosis to nearly $13,800 in the three-month period that included the diagnosis, with the dementia diagnosis occurring at the same time patients were treated for strokes, sepsis, heart failure, urinary tract infections and more.
For those whose impairment was noted on a screening test but not formally diagnosed, costs stayed steady at about $2,900 for the three-month periods before and after they were screened.
The researchers found those costs rose sharply – by 150% – from the months just before a formal diagnosis to the months just after it.
But for those whose cognitive impairment was identified through screening, there was no jump in costs.
The researchers also found that a health crisis leading to a hospital stay and perhaps a nursing home stay accounted for the sharp spike in costs to the Medicare system at the time of a dementia diagnosis.
In fact, undiagnosed dementia may have played a role in that health crisis – for instance, by getting in the way of managing conditions or recognizing symptoms.
The United States Preventive Services Task Force does not formally recommend screening older adults for dementia because the evidence about the impact of screening on patient outcomes is inconclusive.
But many tests are available for people to take themselves or for health providers to give.
If you care about dementia, please read studies about the antibiotic drug that could help treat common dementia, and bottom blood pressure number can tell your dementia risk.
For more information about brain health, please see recent studies about new stem cell therapy to treat dementia, and results showing
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