UCLA Alzheimer’s and Dementia Care Program: Creating a Sustainable Model for National Dissemination

Challenge

By 2025, an estimated 7.2 million Americans will be living with Alzheimer’s Disease, the most common form of dementia. An estimated 20% of those affected will need comprehensive care to address complications associated with the disease and the burden of providing care to older adults with dementia, which falls heavily on unpaid family caregivers.

The UCLA Alzheimer’s and Dementia Care Program (ADC Program) is a model for providing comprehensive dementia care through collaboration between primary care providers and nurse practitioners or physician assistants with special training in dementia care. The model has shown clinical benefits, health care utilization improvements, and cost savings. This project will develop a sustainable model and disseminate the program to an additional 50 sites.

Key Activities

The project is carrying out the following activities:

Develop and implement a sustainable model for widely disseminating the ADC Program
Create a fully operational ADC Dissemination Center based at UCLA
Create a National Dementia Care Learning Collaborative of sites either adopting or considering adopting the ADC. EDC is leading this activity
Promote payment models for insurers to cover the costs of administering the ADC Program
Encourage health systems to participate in Medicare's Guiding and Improved Dementia Experience (GUIDE) Model for alternative payments
Educate advanced practice providers to fulfill dementia care specialist roles and bring enhanced dementia care skills to their existing roles

Impact

This project will:

Provide training and technical assistance to over 50 sites and improve care for thousands of people with dementia and their care partners
Increase ADC Program implementation to 50 additional diverse sites across the United States
Promote health plan payment models that cover the costs of administering comprehensive dementia care models