Health care utilization and costs in the years preceding dementia identification

There is evidence that health care utilization increases after incident dementia, particularly after dementia diagnosis and toward the end of life; however, less is known about utilization in the years before dementia identification.

In this retrospective cohort study we obtained data on n = 5547 beneficiaries from the Health and Retirement Study (HRS)-Medicare linked sample (n = 1241 with and n = 4306 without dementia) to compare longitudinal trends in health care costs and utilization in the 6 years preceding dementia identification relative to a confounder-balanced reference group without dementia.

We found that persons with dementia had a greater prevalence of outpatient emergency department (ED), inpatient hospital, skilled nursing, and home health use, and total health care costs in the years preceding dementia identification compared to their similar counterparts without dementia across a comparable timespan in later life.

This study provides evidence to suggest greater healthcare burden may exist well before clinical manifestation and identification of dementia.

Several studies have documented the tremendous healthcare-related costs of living with dementia, particularly toward the end of life. Dementia is a progressive neurodegenerative disease, which, for some, includes a prolonged pre-clinical phase. However, health services research to date has seldom considered the time before incident dementia. This study documents that health care utilization and costs are significantly elevated in the years before incident dementia relative to a demographically-similar comparison group without dementia.