On 13 July, a new article has been published in the European Medical Journal reporting the identification of facilitators to improve neurocognitive disorders (NCD) diagnosis in nursing homes. Three countries (Bulgaria, France, Greece) participating in the “Act on Dementia” European Joint Action proposed to test telemedicine for NCD detection and diagnosis in six nursing homes. The experiments were implemented from April to June 2018. The six nursing homes were faced with various legal, ethical, and practical requirements before telemedicine could be implemented. Results at three months varied between the countries.
In Greece, the nursing homes’ staff was trained about NCD by a 30 hour tele-educational programme. In France, despite altered Mini-Mental State Examination (MMSE) scores and current telemedicine for behavioural disorders, there were few requests for NCD diagnosis, probably a result of unawareness of benefits of diagnosis for nursing homes’ residents. In Bulgaria, nursing homes’ staff training and 17 teleconsultations for NCD diagnosis took place and led to mild-to-major NCD diagnosis, including aetiological diagnosis in 16 cases. Despite the challenges, all the nursing homes‘ teams were satisfied with telemedicine. The dementia attitude scale results were similar between the different nursing homes, countries, and health professionals and other nursing homes’ professionals.
Each country identified facilitators to improve NCD diagnosis in nursing homes, e.g., a shared tool explaining the benefits of NCD aetiological diagnosis for nursing homes’ patients to be included in the NCD educational programme for nursing homes’ staff and general practitioners.