More Patients with Dementia Are Presenting for Immediate Care. Are You Prepared?

The unmet need for community mental health resources—and the viability (or not) of urgent care as a setting that can provide them—continues to be a problem without a solution. Unfortunately, that problem runs much deeper than the headlines can convey. In addition to patients presenting in the throes of a mental health crisis, multiples more who are living with chronic conditions like dementia present with the same needs for immediate care as everyone else. An article just published by ScienceDaily underscores just how often that’s like to occur, revealing that 1.4 million patients with Alzheimer’s disease and other forms of dementia visit emergency rooms annually—accounting for almost 7% of all ED visits for people over 65 years of age. It stands to reason that many will turn to urgent care currently, given the state of diminished services offered by many hospitals. It’s essential for urgent care providers to bear in mind that dementia may make it challenging for patients to accurately convey the nature of their complaint and that it may be necessary to call upon family members accompanying the patient to provide the details necessary to provide excellent care. Altered Mental Status in the Urgent Care Patient, available now in the JUCM archive, may provide insights that help you and your team prepare to do just that.