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. 2024 Feb 11:17:11786329241232254.
doi: 10.1177/11786329241232254. eCollection 2024.

The Integrated Atlas of Dementia Care in the Australian Capital Territory: A Collective Case Study of Local Service Provision

Hossein Tabatabaei-Jafari  1 , Mary Anne Furst  1 , Nasser Bagheri  1 , Nathan M D'Cunha  2 , Kasia Bail  3 , Perminder S Sachdev  4 , Luis Salvador-Carulla  1   5
Affiliations

The Integrated Atlas of Dementia Care in the Australian Capital Territory: A Collective Case Study of Local Service Provision

Hossein Tabatabaei-Jafari et al. Health Serv Insights. .

Abstract

Background: This study evaluates the dementia care system in a local area and aimed to include all specialised services designed to provide health and social services to people with dementia or age-related cognitive impairment, as well as general services with a high or very high proportion of clients with dementia.

Methods: The study used an internationally standardised service classification instrument called Description and Evaluation of Services and DirectoriEs for Long Term Care (DESDE-LTC) to identify and describe all services providing care to people with dementia in the Australian Capital Territory (ACT).

Results: A total of 47 service providers were eligible for inclusion. Basic information about the services was collected from their websites, and further information was obtained through interviews with the service providers. Of the 107 services offered by the 47 eligible providers, 27% (n = 29) were specialised services and 73% (n = 78) were general services. Most of the services were residential or outpatient, with a target population mostly of people aged 65 or older, and 50 years or older in the case of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Australians. There were government supports available for most types of care through various programmes.

Conclusions: Dementia care in the ACT relies heavily on general services. More widespread use of standardised methods of service classification in dementia will facilitate comparison with other local areas, allow for monitoring of changes over time, permit comparison with services provided for other health conditions and support evidence-informed local planning.

Keywords: DESDE-LTC; atlas of care; dementia; health care system; service mapping.

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Conflict of interest statement

The author(s) declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

Figures

Figure 1.
Figure 1.
Summary of services providing dementia care in the Australian Capital Territory region 2022.
Figure 2.
Figure 2.
The of services providing dementia care in the Australian Capital Territory region 2022: (A) specialised services, (B) general services.
Figure 3.
Figure 3.
Availability of specialised dementia services (brown) and general-50 services (blue) and general-20 services (grey) MTCs per 100 000 adult population.
See this image and copyright information in PMC

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