ELDERLY PEOPLE WITH ADVANCED COGNITIVE IMPAIRMENT IN ENGLAND - RESOURCE USE AND COSTS

This paper describes where elderly people with moderate to severe ('ad vanced') cognitive impairment are living, what resources they use and the costs of these services to different funding agencies. It operatio nally defines dementia in terms of cognitive impairment and uses the O PCS disability surveys to estimate the prevalence of moderate to sever e cognitive impairment in England. The paper goes on to describe servi ces received by this client group on the basis of the same surveys, an d costs these by supplementing the data with information from related studies by the PSSRU. Since accommodation is a major cost, the populat ion of elderly people with cognitive impairment is classified accordin g to their place of residence. Thus we are able to estimate the 'basel ine' global cost of provision for this client group at current prices. We make cost projections at I99I/92 price levels to the national leve l, and discuss the implications in terms of burdens to different agenc ies.