"Care Management for Caregivers of People With Dementia: Effectiveness of a Care Management System to Reduce Unmet Needs of Informal Caregivers of People With Dementia"

The identification of care needs of informal caregivers of people with dementia (PwD) at home is of particular importance to provide timely appropriate support and health care services to this vulnerable group. Family doctors and specialists have a key role in identifying the burden and care needs of informal caregivers. However, this often remains a challenge in everyday practice. In addition, the regionally available support and health care offers are often unknown. A computer-assisted care management system (CMS) can support the identification of unmet care needs and suggest individual, regional offers via a constantly updated database. On the basis of a standardized self-assessment, the VMS identifies personal, social, nursing and medical care needs of informal caregivers of PwD. The investigators apply the system in family and specialist practices as well as in memory clinics where it generates modularized recommendations for interventions based on predefined algorithms. The aim of the study is to test the effectiveness of a CMS to reduce the number of unmet care needs and to improve quality of life of informal caregivers of PwD. The study design is a cluster-randomized, controlled intervention study with two arms and two assessment times. The setting includes family and specialist practices for neurology and/ or psychiatry as well as memory clinics. The CMS will be used in the practices of the intervention group. Informal caregivers of PwD answer a self-administered questionnaire on a tablet PC. From the input, the system generates a list of unmet care needs based on predefined algorithms, and assigns these to individual intervention recommendations. The doctor evaluates each recommendation and forwards a validated list and possibly further intervention recommendations to a study assistant (Care Manager, CM). In a subsequent home visit, the care manager systematically collects additional information, specifies and concretizes the intervention recommendations and supports the informal caregivers of PwD in the implementation of the recommendations. In subsequent telephone contacts, the status of the implementation of the intervention recommendations will be discussed and the care manager coordinates the informal caregivers individual support. Patients of the control group will receive Care as Usual (CAU). After 6 months, a blinded, systematic, computer-based follow-up assessment will be conducted in both groups by hitherto uninvolved study assistants