Dementia case ascertainment using aged care assessment data

Clinical Quality Registries (CQRs) can improve the quality and safety of care by benchmarking clinical practice, informing policy and service design, feeding information back to providers, and complementing research about the effectiveness of care.1 Given their effectiveness for driving improvements in practice,2 ongoing CQRs have been established in many clinical domains internationally. National CQRs for dementia, however, are relatively new and currently limited to a cluster of Scandinavian countries.3 New dementia CQRs are being developed and implemented in several countries. For example, the Australian Dementia Registry (ADNet) ultimately aims to capture and monitor all persons with dementia or mild cognitive impairment at the point of diagnosis via memory or private specialist clinics.4 However, registries must cover a significant proportion of the population they intend to monitor. Limitations in coverage can stifle their benefits3 and efforts to maximise coverage are therefore important. Notably, dementia diagnosis often occurs outside of memory or private specialist clinics,5 so these settings have limited capacity to capture the entire eligible population of individuals with dementia.