They welcome the commitments outlined in the Government’s dementia strategy issued last year. However the MPs are highly critical of the DH for its failure to not only ensure “a robust approach to implementation” but also “to ignite passion, pace and drive or to align leadership.” They highlight that in 2009 the direct cost of dementia was £10.1bn, £8.2bn of which was borne from NHS and social care budgets. The main issues, concerns and recommendations from the report include:
• The Department of Health (DH) is called upon to place dementia alongside cancer and stroke as the most important national priority areas. The Committee does not believe that sufficient attention has been paid to date. Progress should be evaluated annually, along the lines of end of life care.
• The delay in appointing national clinical directors for dementia and older people until January 2010 was felt to have had adverse consequences for the implementation of the dementia strategy.
• The MPs urge the DH to work with SHAs on considering whether local dementia budgets can be established by pooling health and social care resources.
• Each Primary Care Trust (PCT) is advised to have developed a local dementia plan with their SHA by July of this year.
• The Committee expresses its concern that the DH appears to be unaware as to how the first £60m allocated to PCTs for this area has been spent. It notes that the Department has recently commissioned an audit and expects the findings to be supplied to the Committee this summer.
• Variations in access to both diagnostic services and dementia medication remains ‘unacceptable.’
• The DH is called upon to ensure that every acute hospital has appointed a senior clinical dementia leader by the end of this month.
• The Committee remains concerned about what it regards as the excessive prescribing of anti-psychotic drugs to people suffering from dementia. They advocate that each PCT should establish a local target to reduce the prescribing of such medication by two thirds within two years.
• DH research funding for dementia is expected to increase in the two years from 2011 after falling following the PAC’s previous inquiry into this area.
Download the dementia interim report