title: What is the potential for improving care and lowering cost for persons with dementia?
abstract: The increasing prevalence of dementia with population aging has heightened interest in understanding patterns of utilization and health expenditures in persons with dementia (PWD) among policy officials, practicing physicians, and health system. While a substantial part of this interest is concerned with the high costs of care for people diagnosed with dementia (Kelley et al., 2015), less attention has been focused on the costs and consequences of missed or delayed diagnosis in those who screen positive for dementia. The article on "Healthcare resource utilization and cost in dementia: are there differences between patients screened positive for dementia with and those without a formal diagnosis of dementia in primary care in Germany?" by Michalowsky and colleagues (Michalowsky et al., 2015) in this issue makes a particularly important contribution in this regard.
authors.affiliation: Department of Health Policy and Management,Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health,Baltimore,MD,USA.
authors.forename: Karen
authors.initials: K
authors.lastname: Davis
authors.affiliation: Department of Health Policy and Management,Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health,Baltimore,MD,USA.
authors.forename: Amber
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Willink
authors.affiliation: Division of Geriatric Medicine and Gerontology,Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine,Baltimore,MD,USA.
authors.forename: Halima
authors.initials: H
authors.lastname: Amjad
mesh_terms: D003704:Dementia / Q000453:epidemiology*; D005858:Germany; D005102:Health Expenditures; D006801:Humans; D015995:Prevalence