Commons committee on dementia management

There is still inequality between regions in access to drug treatment for dementia and too much antipsychotic prescribing for patients with dementia, says the House of Commons Committee of Public Accounts.

Its interim report on improving dementia services in England calls on the DoH to use NICE’s quality standards and new dementia metrics to set new standards for PCTs that can be monitored by SHAs. Antipsychotic prescribing, which results in up to 1800 deaths annually, should be cut by two-thirds within two years and this should be made a local performance target and a clinical governance priority.