Implementatie, effecten en kosten van casemanagement voor mensen met dementie en hun mantelzorgers: beschrijving van de COMPAS studie

Dementia care in The Netherlands is shifting from fragmented, ad hoc care to more coordinated and personalized care. Case management contributes to this shift. The linkage model and a combination of intensive case management and joint agency care models were selected based on their emerging prominence in The Netherlands. It is unclear if these different forms of case management are more effective than usual care in improving or preserving the functioning and well-being at the patient and caregiver level and at the societal cost.

The objective of this article is to describe the design of a study comparing these two case management care models against usual care. Clinical and cost outcomes are investigated while care processes and the facilitators and barriers for implementation of these models are considered.

Mixed methods include a prospective, observational, controlled, cohort study among persons with dementia and their primary informal caregiver in regions of The Netherlands with and without case management including a qualitative process evaluation. Community-dwelling individuals with a dementia diagnosis with an informal caregiver are included. The primary outcome measure is the Neuropsychiatric Inventory for the people with dementia and the General Health Questionnaire for their caregivers. Costs are measured from a societal perspective. Semi-structured interviews with stakeholders based on the theoretical model of adaptive implementation are planned.

521 pairs of persons with dementia and their primary informal caregiver were included and are followed over two years. In the linked model substantially more impeding factors for implementation were identified compared with the model.

This article describes the design of an evaluation study of two case management models along with clinical and economic data from persons with dementia and caregivers. The impeding and facilitating factors differed substantially between the two models. Further results on cost-effectiveness are expected by the beginning of 2015. This is a Dutch adaptation of MacNeil Vroomen et al., Comparing Dutch casemanagement care models for people with dementia and their caregivers: The design of the COMPAS study. BMC Health Serv Res. 2012 May 28;12:132.