Grant: Travel Awards - Institute Community Support

Persons with dementia and their caregivers have to face daily challenges in navigating the healthcare system, due to the fact that the medical, social, and community services are fragmented and uncoordinated. These challenges might partly explain that persons with dementia have twice the Emergency Department visits and hospital admissions as older persons without dementia. Some of these acute hospital use might be avoidable. The aim of my PhD is to explore how we could prevent avoidable acute hospital use of persons with dementia. I will answer two questions? First, have we already designed and implemented an effective health service intervention to prevent these avoidable acute hospital use? To answer this question, I will synthesize the literature. Second, could continuity of care with family physician prevent these avoidable acute hospital use? To answer this question, I will conduct a study using advanced statistical methods (propensity scores) to measure the impact of primary care continuity on avoidable acute hospital use in persons with dementia in Quebec. I hope that my research will ultimately inform healthcare policies aiming at reducing avoidable acute hospital use in dementia, and better the care offered to this vulnerable population.