Profiles of the Different Diagnostic Outcomes at the NHSCT Memory Service

The Northern Health and Social Care Trust (NHSCT) offers timely differential diagnosis to improve quality of care in dementia. Increasing awareness about dementia has increased the number of people who speak to their GP about concerns in relation to their memory or the memory of someone close to them. An anonymised database was set up to record information about the profile of people referred to the service. Data is presented for 6000 referrals and highlights the different profiles of specific dementias, and other outcomes. Greater understanding of these profiles has significant benefits. Sharing information about the profile of people who are likely to have a dementia with referral agents will help them to make more informed decisions about who to refer to specialist Memory Services. This has benefits for the person in terms of avoiding the unnecessary stress of a referral for assessment of dementia. It also offers savings to the health economy by reducing inappropriate referrals. Greater understanding of the relative strengths and weakness of the different types of dementia enables enables appropriate advice and the opportunity for the development of compensation strategies. Greater understanding of MCI and MCI which is likely to develop into dementia offer the opportunity for early intervention and decisions about ongoing monitoring. This data has facilitated better planning of services to accommodate the number of people presenting to the memory service who are likely to have dementia.