A new national study shows significant variation in the likelihood of someone being diagnosed with Alzheimer’s disease or another form of dementia.
The very same person living in a different place can have twice the odds of receiving a dementia diagnosis according to the study.
“These findings go beyond demographic and population-level differences in risk, and indicate that there are health system-level differences that could be targeted and remediated,” said Dr. Julie Bynum, a healthcare researcher who led the study. “The message is clear: from place to place the likelihood of getting your dementia diagnosed varies, and that may happen because of everything from practice norms for health care providers to individual patients’ knowledge and care-seeking behavior.”
The New York Post reports on the new study’s findings published last week in Alzheimer’s & Dementia: The Journal of the Alzheimer’s Association. Here’s the start of the story:
Location, location, location!
Where you live in the US may affect your chances of getting a dementia diagnosis, a new study from the University of Michigan and Dartmouth College finds.
Nearly 7 million Americans have been diagnosed with dementia, the researchers said, while millions more likely have symptoms but have not been formally diagnosed.
The study authors determined that a person has up to twice the chance of getting a dementia diagnosis in some regions than in others. For example, someone in Wichita Falls, Texas, may be twice as likely to get diagnosed than if he was in Minot, North Dakota.
“Even within a group of people who are all 80, depending on where you live, you might be twice as likely to actually get a diagnosis,” Dr. Julie Bynum, the study’s lead author and a geriatrician at the University of Michigan Medical School, told NPR.
The research, published last week in Alzheimer’s & Dementia: The Journal of the Alzheimer’s Association, found the variation was most striking for black and Hispanic people and those on the younger end of the risk range, between 66 and 74 years old.