Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what steps his Department is taking to help tackle regional differences in (a) timely and (b) accurate diagnostic rates for dementia.

We are committed to recovering the dementia diagnosis rate (DDR) to the national ambition of 66.7%, which in England, at the end of February 2025, was 65.4%. To support the implementation of the Dementia Care Pathway, we have developed a memory service dashboard to support commissioners and providers with appropriate data on the diagnostic pathway and enable targeted support where needed.

To reduce variation in diagnosis rates, OHID’s Dementia Intelligence Network has developed a tool for local systems, which includes an assessment of population characteristics such as rurality and socio-economic deprivation. This enables systems to investigate local variation in diagnosis and take informed action to enhance their diagnosis rates. The tool has been released and is available via the NHS Futures Collaboration platform.

To aid dementia diagnosis and the provision of support in care homes, NHS England funded an evidence-based improvement project to fund two Trusts in each region, which is 14 sites, to pilot the Diagnosing Advanced Dementia Mandate (DiADeM) protocol. Learning is currently being shared and promoted with regional and local partners following an impact assessment of the pilots. The Department delivers dementia research through the National Institute for Health and Care Research (NIHR). The NIHR funds a range of research into dementia, for example investing nearly £11 million to develop new digital approaches for the early detection and diagnosis of dementia. The NIHR is also partnering with the Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC) and the Alzheimer’s Society to support a £5.5 million investment in four Dementia Network Plus research grants. One of the Networks, EQUADEM, seeks to address inequalities in dementia diagnosis and care.