Last month the Alzheimer’s Association released its 2019 Alzheimer’s Disease Facts and Figures report, a statistical resource for U.S. data related to Alzheimer’s disease, the most common cause of dementia. The report included a Special Report that discusses Alzheimer’s detection in the primary care setting, for which Versta Research was commissioned to conduct two parallel surveys: (1) a survey of 1,954 U.S. seniors age 65 and older, and (2) a survey of 1,000 Primary Care Physicians who treat patients age 65 and older.

The goal of the research was to document experiences with early detection of cognitive decline in the primary care setting. The surveys found that despite a strong belief among seniors and primary care physicians that brief cognitive assessments are important, only half of seniors are being assessed for thinking and memory issues, and even fewer receive routine assessments.

“There were two important challenges we faced in this research,” said Joseph Hopper, president of Versta Research. “The first was finding a way to survey an older population. Not all of them are online, and some of them would be experiencing symptoms of cognitive decline. To reach them, we partnered with a research center at the University of Chicago and used a combination of online and telephone surveys, and we did it in both English and Spanish.”

“The second challenge was developing parallel surveys of seniors and PCPs to give us 360-view of what happens in the primary care setting. It requires careful design so that questions will make sense to both seniors and doctors, and so that we can compare the individual experiences of seniors to what doctors report for their patients as a whole.”

The full 2019 Alzheimer’s Disease Facts and Figures report is available for free. The Special Report on early detection in the primary care setting appears on page 58-71. The report has also been published on Science Direct, and is available for free. Additionally, the Alzheimer’s Association has created an infographic that highlight key findings from the research.