White Paper: Undiagnosed Dementia in Medicare Advantage Plans
At least 40% of dementia goes undiagnosed in the United States today (up to 60% by some estimates), leading to missed opportunities to intervene, worsening outcomes for patients, and creating extra burdens in time, quality, and cost for providers and health systems.
SPARK Neuro’s primary mission is to help solve this massive problem by improving access to dementia screening and assessment, offloading the burden from health systems, and improving outcomes for patients everywhere.
In this paper, we characterize the extent of the underdiagnosis problem, some of its impacts, and the potential benefits of solving the problem. We describe the epidemiology of dementia and dementia underdiagnosis and it’s impacts on health outcomes We also detail the financial impacts for health systems and Medicare Advantage plans in particular, and we explore some of the potential benefits of reducing underdiagnosis rates.