O5‐07‐04: DEMENTIA INFORMAL CARE COSTS IN THE SLOVENIAN CENTRE FOR COGNITIVE IMPAIRMENTS

Dementias are costly diseases; in 2015, the estimated worldwide cost was 818 billion US dollars. The costs of informal care are substantial and greatly surpass the direct medical costs. Even if informal care is usually unpaid as it is provided by family, it still incurs costs because of a loss of production from absence from work. With the development of standardized tools (e.g. the Resource Utilization in Dementia – RUD), comparison of formal and informal care resources is possible. We aimed to evaluate the economic impact of one year informal care costs of patients with dementia from the cognitive outpatient clinic of Department of Neurology, Ljubljana, Slovenia. Informal care costs were evaluated with Resource Utilization in Dementia (RUD) questionnaire for non-institutionalized and institutionalized patients. Inputs used in calculating the time of indirect care were: (1) basic activities of daily living (ADL); (2) assistance with instrumental activities of daily living (IADL) and (3) supervision to manage behavioral symptoms or to prevent dangerous events. More than 700 patient records from 2015 were reviewed. Caregivers of patients dementia or cognitive impairment were identified (n=311), and 149 RUDs were completed via a telephone interview. Control group comprised of 92 caregivers of patients with no memory complaints that visited primary care physicians in the same city (Ljubljana). Median age of dementia caregivers was 64 (interquartile range–IQR 19), while median age of non-dementia caregivers was 58 (IQR 17, p=0.003). In both groups, caregivers were predominantly women (74.5% in dementia and 71.7% in non-dementia group, p=0.638). Dementia patient caregivers more frequently shared the household with their care-receivers (72.7% vs. 37.0%, p<0.001). Patients with dementia required more care, which was reflected in higher IADL and supervision time, but not in ADL time (Table 1). Informal care was significantly higher in dementia than in non-dementia patients, reflected in increased supervision time and help with instrumental daily activities (e.g. help with shopping, preparing food, managing personal finances, etc.); activities that are most affected by cognitive impairment. Evaluation of dementia costs is important in anticipating future trends and determining cost-effective approaches, tailored to local health-care systems .