Dementia: Diagnosis
(asked on 17th April 2025) - View Source
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, whether his Department is taking steps to help shorten waiting times for dementia diagnoses.
A timely diagnosis is vital to ensuring that a person with dementia can access the advice, information, care, and support that can help them to live well and remain independent for as long as possible.
We remain committed to recovering the dementia diagnosis rate to the national ambition of 66.7%. The Government is also committed to transforming diagnostic services, including the detection and diagnosis of dementia, and will support the National Health Service to increase capacity to meet the demand for diagnostic services through investment in new capacity, including magnetic resonance imaging and computerized tomography scanners.
The Dementia Care Pathway: Full Implementation Guidance, commissioned by NHS England, outlines the dementia care pathway and the associated benchmarks to support improvements in the delivery and quality of care and support. It showcases good-practice examples of services that have successfully reduced their waiting times. Further information is available at the following link:
To support recovery of the dementia diagnosis rates and implementation of the Dementia Care Pathway, NHS England has developed a dashboard for management information purposes. The aim is to support commissioners and providers of memory services with appropriate data and enable targeted support where needed.