Has COVID‐19 affected dementia diagnosis rates in England?

Abstract

AbstractBackgroundThe COVID‐19 pandemic impacted on the provision of care and routine activity of all National Health Service (NHS) services. While General Practitioner referrals to memory services in England have returned to pre‐pandemic levels, the estimated dementia diagnosis rate (DDR) fell by 5.4% between March 2020 and February 2023.MethodsIn this paper we explore whether this reduction is accurate or is an artefact of the way the NHS collects data.ResultsWe explore the processes that may have affected national dementia diagnosis rates during and following the COVID‐19 pandemic.ConclusionsWe discuss what action could be taken to improve the DDR in the future.