Integrated Care for people with dementia: how to improve quality of life of people with dementia and their informal care-givers?

摘要

Background: Worldwide, around 47 million people have dementia. The total number of people with dementia is estimated to near 75 million in 2030 and almost triple by 2050 to 132 million. Also in the Netherlands the number of people with dementia is growing. Current public policy aims to enable people with care and support needs, including people with dementia, to live independently in their own homes for as long as possible, with a high quality of life. This poses great challenges for dementia care and support for people with dementia and their informal caregivers. Not only the content of care and support is important, but also the organization and the degree of collaboration between the different disciplines and care providers is very important which is an important aspect of integrated care. The Quality Standard for Dementia Care and Support describes what good dementia care and support is. In order to improve quality of life and quality of care and support it is important to systematically measure to what extent dementia networks work according this quality standard and to generate results that help to improve the quality of life and quality of care and support. Therefore, we established a standard set of indicators. Every two years dementia networks fill in a questionnaire which measures to what extent they work according to the Standard. Besides this questionnaire a set of indicators which measures quality of life on client level is developed, which is used more and more by dementia networks.