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Dementia Prevalence Calculator

Client: NHS South of England (West)
Working with: Professor Martin Prince, King’ College London
Lead contractor: Crystal Blue Consulting Ltd

Context
Dementia is one of the major challenges of the 21st century. It is currently underdiagnosed and the government has made a commitment to improve rates of detection in the future. NHS South West England commissioned us to develop a “Dementia Prevalence Calculator” to help GPs and commissioners address the potential diagnosis gap in their area.

Description
We developed four easy to use interactive modelsthatcalculate the prevalence of dementia at (1) GP Practice (2) CCG, (3) Local Area Team & (4) Local Authority level for all of England. The models use national dementia prevalence rates adjusted to take into account the presence or otherwise of local residential nursing or care homes. The models compare the predicted number of dementia cases with the organisation’s dementia register to reveal the “diagnosis gap”, and benchmark the organisation with its peers. In addition the models also provide a forecast of dementia prevalence for the organisation and allow the organisation to calculate the impact of changes in its diagnosis rate over time.

Services provided
Research, data mining, database creation, statistical analysis, model building, benchmarking and interpretation, liaison and presentation, report writing.

Highlights
The models advance the calculation of dementia prevalence to the next level of sensitivity by specifically taking into account the local impact of elderly residential care. The model has been adopted as the standard by NHS Commissioning Board in its CCG planning guidelines and by NICE in its revised dementia guidelines.

Models available:
www.dementiapartnerships.org.uk/diagnosis/dementia-prevalence-calculator