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CMHTs provide follow-up for patients with dementia and behavioural and psychological symptoms of dementia in both service models

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  02 January 2018

Judy S. Rubinsztein
Affiliation:
Norfolk and Suffolk NHS Foundation Trust, email: judy.rubinsztein@nsft.nhs.uk
Deborah Girling
Affiliation:
Cambridgeshire and Peterborough NHS Foundation Trust
Carol Brayne
Affiliation:
Cambridge Institute of Public Health, Department of Public Health and Primary Care, University of Cambridge
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Abstract

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Creative Commons
Creative Common License - CCCreative Common License - BY
This is an open-access article published by the Royal College of Psychiatrists and distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.
Copyright
Copyright © Royal College of Psychiatrists, 2015

David Jolley makes a valuable point about the need for ongoing support for patients receiving a dementia diagnosis and we agree that all patients deserve such input. Reference Jolley1 We disagree that our patients are failed by either the memory clinic combined with the community mental health team (CMHT) service or the traditional CMHT service described in our paper, Reference Rubinsztein, van Rensburg, Al-Salihy, Girling, Lafortune and Radhakrishnan2 as both services have good relationships with general practitioners (GPs), who can refer rapidly into the CMHT arms of both services as any behavioural and psychological symptoms of dementia arise. Jolley criticises post-diagnostic signposting to the third sector as leaving patients and their relatives adrift. But these post-diagnostic services have been specifically commissioned from a third sector organisation and not from secondary care, which has the disadvantage of not being part of psychiatric services but is an acceptable, ‘non-medicalised’ service that can be accessed at any time. The study of the third sector organisation was not within the remit of our paper.

We did not comment specifically on referral rates and this study examined only a small part of the service in these trusts, so we are not certain where the figure of 5 per 1000 that Jolley quotes is derived from. In fact, the services have quite different levels of staffing (both medical and non-medical) and there are other memory services in the region provided by neurologists and geriatricians as well (not examined in our paper), so we had specifically not commented on referral rates in total but only on these small patches within the service.

Both services have changed considerably since 2011 and some service improvements have been inspired specifically by this evaluation. Both services now ensure multidisciplinary follow-up for all patients (where patients and their carers are advised verbally and in writing how to contact various local services according to their needs in the future) and the memory-clinic-based service has cut down on some paper assessment tools. More therapy treatments are offered in both services. Other changes include the introduction of nurse specialists to assist in the memory-clinic-based service. The CMHT service continues to offer consultant medical domiciliary diagnostic assessment, with prescribing now done by GPs from the outset and initial monitoring and post-diagnostic support provided through the CMHT.

We are concerned about the lack of research into these services, rapidly changing across the country. The introduction of new models should be accompanied by robust independent evaluation and evidence of sustained benefit over a sufficient period to prove worth. Multiple innovations in the context of constantly reorganised health and social care systems have no evidence base to justify them from the perspective of frail older people where continuity has been demonstrated to be highly valued.

References

1 Jolley, D. Heads in the sand may leave old age psychiatry looking foolish and vulnerable. Commentary on … A memory clinic v. traditional community mental health team service. BJPsych Bull 2015; 39: 12–4.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
2 Rubinsztein, JS, van Rensburg, MJ, Al-Salihy, Z, Girling, D, Lafortune, L, Radhakrishnan, M, et al. A memory clinic v. traditional community mental health team service: comparison of costs and quality. BJPsych Bull 2015; 39: 611.Google Scholar
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