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Has COVID-19 affected dementia diagnosis rates in England?
Jemma Hazan1, Kathy Y Liu1, Jeremy D Isaacs2,3
1Division of Psychiatry, University College London, London, UK.
Background:
The COVID-19 pandemic impacted on the provision of care and routine activity of all National Health Service (NHS) services. While General Practitioner referrals to memory services in England have returned to pre-pandemic levels, the estimated dementia diagnosis rate (DDR) fell by 5.4% between March 2020 and February 2023.
Methods:
In this paper we explore whether this reduction is accurate or is an artefact of the way the NHS collects data.
Results:
We explore the processes that may have affected national dementia diagnosis rates during and following the COVID-19 pandemic.
Conclusions:
We discuss what action could be taken to improve the DDR in the future.
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