We collect and publish data about people with dementia at each GP practice, so that the NHS (GPs and commissioners) can make informed choices about how to plan their services around their patient's needs.
This publication includes the rate of dementia diagnosis. As not everyone with dementia has a formal diagnosis, this statistic compares the number of people thought to have dementia with the number of people diagnosed with dementia, aged 65 and over.
This data is extracted through General Practice Extraction Service therefore the burden of the Coronavirus (COVID-19) outbreak has not affected the data collection of this publication.
The outbreak of COVID-19 has led to unprecedented changes in the work and behaviour of General Practices and subsequently the data within this publication will be impacted, including the diagnosis rate (of those aged 65 or over estimated to have dementia have dementia) and contextual data from Patients Registered in a GP Practice, however we are unable to estimate the extent of the impact.
As such we urge caution in drawing any conclusions from these data without consideration of the country's circumstances as of 31 August 2022 and would recommend that any uses of these data are accompanied by an appropriate caveat.
NOTE: There has been a change to the reference sets which allow us to identify patients with a recorded dementia diagnosis who were also prescribed antipsychotic medication. Following consultations with NHS England and clinical professionals, a change was made to the antipsychotic medication reference set to exclude medication which is administered for the purposes of palliative care. These changes affect data in the Recorded Dementia Diagnoses publication from October 2021 onwards and should be taken into account when comparing data with previous months.
Further information on the antipsychotic medication reference set used prior to October 2021 and on the antipsychotic medications excluding palliative care used from October 2021 can be found in the 'Related Links' at the bottom of the page
