NHS Digital website
We have been very busy over the past year ensuring our dementia diagnosis and prevalence are correct and have accurate Quality Outcomes Framework (QoF) registers in our practices.
It may be a good exercise to see how you compare with practices in different areas of the country that have similar list sizes and demographics as your practice. This will allow you to see whether your prevalence is similar to other areas of the country. If it isn’t, maybe you need to check your dementia register.
Here is how to do it:
Click on this link to take you to the NHS digital website:
http://www.content.digital.nhs.uk/catalogue/PUB22408
Then select the link below which takes you to the practice level
http://www.content.digital.nhs.uk/catalogue/PUB22408/qual-outc-fram-rec-dem-diag-oct-2016-csv.csv
Once you have selected from the spreadsheet, the data tells you how many patients are on the list that are age 64 and under and how many patients on the list that are age 65 plus. If you add these two figures together it will give you the registered list size.
The data then breaks the list down.
- Number of many patients on the list age 64 and under with a diagnosis of dementia
- Number of many patients on the list age 65 and over with a diagnosis of dementia
The table below is how it looks on the spreadsheet. You can select a practice by its name or by the practice code.
I looked at two practices, selected at random, that were anonymous to me. These practices had between 9,248 and 9,614 registered patients.
Practice 1
DEMENTIA_REGISTER_0_64 | 5 |
DEMENTIA_REGISTER_65_PLUS | 68 |
PAT_LIST_0_64 | 8248 |
PAT_LIST_65_PLUS | 1500 |
Practice 2
DEMENTIA_REGISTER_0_64 | 0 |
DEMENTIA_REGISTER_65_PLUS | 74 |
PAT_LIST_0_64 | 7308 |
PAT_LIST_65_PLUS | 2306 |
Practice 1
Total list size practice 9248
Total patients with dementia diagnosis 73
Practice 2
Total list size practice 9614
Total patients with dementia diagnosis 74
Interestingly, there isn’t much difference. Maybe the exercise of collecting all the data shows that dementia is pretty much the same whether you are in a deprived area or an affluent area.
Key facts From NHS digital
Accurate register Recorded dementia prevalence at 31 October 2016 is 0.773 per cent (1 person in 129).
When considered alongside monthly data collected in 2015/16, this indicates a progressive increase in recorded prevalence from March 2016 (0.759) to October 2016 (0.773).
After adjustments to remove spurious, ‘non-GP’ practices, shared practices and practices which decided not to participate in this extraction, the extract cohort available for collection was 7,457 practices.
Of the extract cohort, data for 7,358 practices were collected, representing 98.7 per cent coverage of cohort practices.
Resources
Geographical coverage:
England
Geographical granularity:
GP practices, dental practices, pharmacies and clinics