The dementia study cohort comprises 158,730 people aged 30 and over who were living in Australia in 2019 and had a dementia record in the linked data.
The use of health services changes after a person enters permanent residential aged care. For example, general practitioner attendances increase, and specialist attendances decrease (AIHW 2020, 2022, 2023). To partly account for these changes, the dementia study cohort was split into 2 study groups:
- People living in the community: includes 69,390 people (44% of the cohort) who were living in the community for all of 2019. This may include people who used residential respite care, people who were living in other supported accommodation, and people who were living in residential aged care facilities not included in the linked data (see Box 1.1).
- People living in residential aged care: includes 89,340 people (56% of the cohort) who were living in permanent residential aged care for all or part of 2019.
Differences in the number, age and sex profiles of people living in the community and in residential aged care (see Figure 1.1) should be borne in mind when exploring the results in this report, and direct comparisons are not recommended.
- There were a similar number of men and women living with dementia in the community, however, the number of women living in residential aged care was double that of men (partly because women have a longer life expectancy than men, so are more likely to need care at older ages)
- People living in residential aged care were older (55% were aged 85 and over) than those living in the community (32% were aged 85 and over).
- Women were more likely than men to be aged 85 and over, both in residential aged care (60% and 43%, respectively) and in the community (35% and 28%, respectively).
To account for some of the differences due to age, age-standardised rates are reported where possible.
