The April 2015 data for the Dementia Assessment and Referral data collection in England by NHS England were released on 1st July 2015 according to the arrangements approved by the UK Statistics Authority.

The Dementia Assessment and Referral data collection has changed from April 2015 to reflect changes due to extending the 2015/16 CQUIN to include community service providers as well as acute trusts for the Find and Assess/Investigate indicators and provide an over view at CCG level for the Refer/Inform indicator.

Three main measures are reported – the number and proportion of patients aged 75 and over admitted as an emergency for more than 72 hours:
i) who have been identified as potentially having dementia or delirium; [Find]
ii) who are appropriately assessed; and, where appropriate, [Assess/Investigate]
iii) were referred on to specialist services with a care plan meeting locally agreed standards. [Refer/Inform]
Parts i) and ii) are to be reported by Acute trusts and Community Service Providers, Parts iii) are to be reported by CCGs these are detailed in the 2015/16 CQUIN.

Note on Data Quality and Comparisons:
The data presented below focuses on Acute Trusts, and Community Service and Other Providers. Acute trusts have maintained a good response rate similar to previous data and where appropriate, levels have been compared against previous data. To date, the response from CCGs has been deemed too low quality both in terms of coverage and completeness to report at this stage (hence there is no published data associated with indicator iii) at this stage. The response from Community Service Providers has also been low but deemed sufficiently complete for those organisations responding to publish these results.

Key points – Acute trusts
The key results for data collected from NHS Foundation and Non-Foundation Acute trusts on the number and proportion of patients aged 75 and over admitted as an emergency for more than 72 hours who have been identified as potentially having dementia or delirium and who are appropriately assessed [measures i) and ii)] are as follows:

• 105 trusts achieved at least 90% in both measures.
• 89% of admitted patients were initially assessed for potential dementia in April 2015, down 2 percentage points from 91% in March 2015.
• Of the patients initially assessed and found as potentially having dementia, 95% were further assessed in April 2015, similar to March 2015.
• The percentage of trusts in April 2015 achieving at least 90% in each measure was as follows:
o 78% of the trusts (110 trusts) carried out initial assessments for cases of dementia, a decrease of 1 percentage point from 79% of the trusts (114 trusts) in March 2015.
o 86% (121 trusts) carried out further diagnoses, an increase of 1 percentage point from 85% in March 2015 (122 trusts);
• The number of data returns submitted by NHS providers of acute funded care was 147 in April 2015, a decrease of 2 trusts from 149 in March 2015. These included 6 nil returns in April and 5 nil returns in March which were excluded from the figures reported above.

Key points – Community Service and Other Providers
The key results for data collected from Community Service and Other Providers on the number and proportion of patients aged 75 and over admitted as an emergency for more than 72 hours who have been identified as potentially having dementia and who are appropriately assessed are as below [measures i) and ii)]. Note, that to date, a small number of Community Service and Other Providers have been able to submit data while systems are put in place to enable the data to be collected and reported. Only responding organisations have been presented in the data.

• 1 trust achieved at least 90% in both.
• 81% of admitted patients were initially assessed for potential dementia in April 2015.
• Of the patients initially assessed and found as potentially having dementia, 97% were further assessed in April 2015.
• The percentage of community service providers in April 2015 achieving at least 90% in each measure was as follows:
o 25% of the trusts (2 trusts) carried out initial assessments for cases of dementia.
o 63% (5 trusts) carried out further diagnoses.
• The number of data returns submitted by Community Service and Other Providers was 11 in April 2015. This included 3 nil returns which were excluded from the figures reported above.

The full data tables can be found in the NHS England website:
https://www.england.nhs.uk/statistics/dementia/