Costing community care of people with dementia

Community-based care for elderly people with somatic or mental health problems is an explicit policy preference in a great many countries today. As earlier chapters have described, there are numerous reasons for this preference, including current economic pressures on available resources, and especially concerns about the future resource pressures. Consequently, the costs and cost-effectiveness of community care have attracted growing attention from national and local policy makers, service providers and funding bodies.

Dementia, particularly in the later stages of the illness, is associated with high levels of service utilisation and there is a<p><p>common need for admission to some form of institutional or congregate care (residential or nursing homes, hospitals and similar). The ageing of the world population, and the associated increases in the numbers of people with dementia, have thus concentrated the minds of national governments and the managers of health and social care systems on affordable community alternatives to institutional care.