Abstract Body

Background and purpose: Nowadays, crisis admissions of persons with dementia are more prevalent. Better collaboration between primary care professionals could prevent crisis situations. The DementiaNet program supports interdisciplinary networks of primary care professionals from the medical, care and social services. We aim to determine the effect of the DementiaNet program on the number of crisis admissions.

Methods: DementiaNet networks started from 2015 onwards and receive support for a period of two years to work towards structured collaboration. Yearly, networks collect patient data on five quality of care indicators, and on admission to a hospital or nursing home due to a crisis. The numbers of crisis admissions in advanced networks (>2 years active) and starting networks (<2 years active) were compared with an independent T-test. The relation between quality of care and the number of crisis admissions was determined with logistic regression.

Results: 34 networks with on average 9 professions (frequently: general practitioner, practice nurse, community nurse and case manager) were included. The networks collected data of 1689 patient years of which 479 patient years had a crisis. Advanced networks had less crisis admissions than starting networks, 0.25 versus 0.30 respectively (p=0.038, CI=0.003 – 0.091). Quality of care was not associated with the number of crisis situations.

Conclusions: In advanced DementiaNet networks less crisis admissions occurred. Surprisingly, this effect was not mediated by quality of care. Further research in a larger database could contribute to unravelling the complex relations between network maturity, quality of care and crisis admissions in primary dementia care.