Dementia Outcomes Improved With Supportive Care

A study in JAMA Internal Medicine found a trained, unlicensed care team navigator and an advanced-practice nurse, social worker, and pharmacist improved multiple aspects of care for people with dementia, reports MedPage Today . Improvement was observed in quality of life, emergency department visits, caregiver depression, and caregiver burden. "Effective phone-based dementia care that addresses the needs of the person with dementia and the caregiver can be provided from a hub across large geographic areas, irrespective of . . . healthcare system affiliations," said the University of California, San Francisco's Katherine Possin. "The Care Ecosystem addresses gaps in our healthcare system around dementia. While the Care Ecosystem won't cure dementia, it changes the experience of dementia for both the beneficiaries and the caregivers, so that they may live as well as possible." Previous data from the Care Ecosystem research group indicated that caregiver and dementia health were interconnected, as persons with dementia were almost twice as likely to visit an emergency department if their caregiver had depression, for instance.