Grant: Operating Grant: Alzheimer Society Research Program - NI Grants

Many rural residents experience barriers to effective dementia care. In-home virtual dementia care has been shown to address barriers to clinic-based visits, including travel, mobility limitations, and behavioural concerns. However, without in-person technical support, rural older adults may face obstacles to accessing in-home virtual care. The overall objective of the proposed research is to increase access to dementia diagnosis and post-diagnostic support for rural persons through adaptation and evaluation of an acceptable and effective home-based virtual primary care memory clinic model. In-person technical support will be provided during the home-based appointment. Using a 3-phase research approach, we will collaborate with two established rural primary care memory clinic teams in southern Saskatchewan. We will initially adapt an established in-person clinic-based memory clinic model to a home-based virtual model. Acceptability and effectiveness of the model will be improved through continuous evaluation based on feedback from patients, caregivers, and teams. Changes in patient and caregiver outcomes between baseline and follow-up will be evaluated, and team experiences examined. We expect the study will result in a home-based virtual primary care memory clinic model that increases rural access to dementia diagnosis and post-diagnostic support. We anticipate feedback from patients, caregivers, and participating memory clinic teams will result in a highly acceptable and effective model. Also, we expect the final model will be associated with positive patient and caregiver outcomes. Following recommendations from the Alzheimer Society of Canada Landmark Study, the proposed research will focus on reducing barriers to care for rural older adults and improving rural access to memory clinics. Home-based virtual memory clinics have the potential to improve access to effective rural dementia care as in-home telemedicine continues to become more common.