Here are eight things to know about the new tracker:
1. Researchers from NORC at the University of Chicago and the George Washington University School of Public Health in Washington, D.C., analyzed Medicare fee-for-service claims and Medicare Advantage encounter data for the tracker, according to an investigation published Sept. 3 in JAMA Network Open.
2. The tracker uses diagnostic and drug code evidence related to Alzheimer’s to categorize beneficiaries’ dementia status as “highly likely,” “likely,” and “possible.”
3. The tracker reports the prevalence, incidence, mortality and payment information related to patients with Alzheimer’s disease and related dementias, as well as the rate of COVID-19 infections.
4. Researchers plan to expand the tracker with additional data and outcome measures in the future.
5. The Dementia DataHub provides data at the national, state and county levels for public use, along with data visualization resources.
6. Researchers note the tracker does not capture Medicare beneficiaries who may have been diagnosed outside of Medicare and that some categorized beneficiaries may or may not have dementia.
7. The latest data shows that over 8.1 million beneficiaries enrolled since January 2020 have evidence of dementia.
8. Of those, 4.3 million were categorized as highly likely to have dementia, 1.1 million as likely to have dementia and 2.6 million as possibly having dementia.
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