Grant: Travel Awards - Institute Community Support

Persons with dementia have the highest healthcare needs in the year following diagnosis; this is often complicated by prescription medications that have associated risks and can increase these patients' healthcare utilization (HCU). Little is known on HCU patterns of persons with dementia; this study aims to identify HCU groups to better inform healthcare planning for persons with dementia. This will be accomplished by identifying HCU groups of persons newly diagnosed with dementia and measuring associations between HCU and prescription medication use. Patients were included in this study if they were diagnosed with dementia between April 2015 and March 2016, aged 65+ and living in the community. 12459 patients met these criteria, 40% were male and their mean age at diagnosis was 81.7 years. This research will identify HCU groups based on primary care, emergency department, and hospital use, then measure the association between medication use and these HCU groups. We expect that HCU groups will be based on specific patterns of HCU rather than general low to high healthcare use. This study is expected to provide insight on patterns of HCU as well as its association to medication use by persons with dementia; this will provide context for future studies to understand trajectories of care, minimize unnecessary HCU by persons with dementia and enable better care planning in the early stages following diagnosis.