Integrated Care for people with dementia: how to improve quality of life of people with dementia and their informal care-givers?

Background : Worldwide, around 47 million people have dementia. The total number of people with dementia is estimated to near 75 million in 2030 and almost triple by 2050 to 132 million. Also in the Netherlands the number of people with dementia is growing. Current public policy aims to enable people with care and support needs, including people with dementia, to live independently in their own homes for as long as possible, with a high quality of life. This poses great challenges for dementia care and support for people with dementia and their informal caregivers. Not only the content of care and support is important, but also the organization and the degree of collaboration between the different disciplines and care providers is very important which is an important aspect of integrated care. The Quality Standard for Dementia Care and Support describes what good dementia care and support is. In order to improve quality of life and quality of care and support it is important to systematically measure to what extent dementia networks work according this quality standard and to generate results that help to improve the quality of life and quality of care and support. Therefore, we established a standard set of indicators. Every two years dementia networks fill in a questionnaire which measures to what extent they work according to the Standard. Besides this questionnaire a set of indicators which measures quality of life on client level is developed, which is used more and more by dementia networks. Aims and Objectives : The aim of this presentation is to discuss how dementia care and support is monitored / evaluated in various countries and how this is used to benefit clinical practice. We will present the Dutch approach in which 80% of the dementia networks do a self-assessment every two year and measure outcomes on client level. Format timing, speakers, discussion, group work, etc : In this presentation recent developments in integrated dementia care and outcome indicators will be presented. We give some examples how to use measurements to improve dementia care and support. We will discuss the following questions: - What is good dementia care and support? - How do you measure this? - How do you improve care and support based on these measurements? Target audience : Any healthcare professional from early to senior career level, educationalists, policy makers, managers, patients/caregivers, students wishing to learn more about dementia care and how to improve it. Learnings/Take away : Examples how to define quality of dementia care and support How to measure the quality of dementia care and support How to improve the quality of dementia care and support