"Costs for Dementia Care Far Exceeding Other Diseases, Study Finds"
When a group of researchers asked whether dementia, heart disease or cancer involved the greatest health care costs in the last five years of life for patients on Medicare, the answer they found was surprising. The most expensive, by far, was dementia. For many families, the cost of caring for a dementia patient often “consumed almost their entire household wealth,” said Amy S. Kelley, MD, MSHS, an associate professor of geriatrics at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai and the lead author of the paper published on Monday in the Annals of Internal Medicine. Diane E. Meier, MD, a professor of geriatrics and palliative care at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai, said most families are unprepared for the financial burden of dementia, assuming Medicare will pick up most costs. “What patients and their families don’t realize is that they are on their own,” Dr. Meier said. Learn more.