Measure 5.1: Improved coordination of care for people living with dementia
Coordination of care refers to work done by people within the healthcare system to arrange care, follow-up patients, and ensure good information transfer and communication between patients and healthcare workers. The National Dementia Action Plan has identified coordination of care as an area for improvement, as people with dementia often fall through gaps in the health, aged care, and disability systems.
There are no national data to monitor coordination of care across all people living with dementia, particularly care delivered through general practitioners (GPs) and other primary care providers. Some data are available from the Carer Wellbeing Survey that provide insights into the experiences of carers of people living with dementia. However, the indicator shown below should be interpreted with caution as the data may under-represent carers who are not engaged with carer support organisations, and they do not capture the experiences of people living with dementia who do not have a carer.
Data development is underway, with ongoing work to improve the availability of national data to report on diagnostic and post-diagnostic care. Data from the recently conducted Living with Dementia Survey may be added to reporting when they become available.
Poor coordination of care
-
Indicator
Proportion of carers of people living with dementia who reported that poor coordination of care was a moderate or large barrier to accessing services for the person they care for.
-
Baseline value
48% of carers in 2024
-
Latest value
Baseline value only
-
Progress
To be provided in future updates
The desired outcome is that more people living with dementia and their carers have good coordination of care to access the services they need, meaning this indicator should decrease over time.
Change over time
Future updates of this report will track changes over time for this indicator.
Historical change over time: 2023 to 2024
There was a statistically significant decrease in the proportion of carers who reported that poor coordination of care was a moderate or large barrier to accessing services for the person they care for, from 55% in 2023 to 48% in 2024.
In 2024, the proportion of carers of people living with dementia who reported that poor coordination of care was a moderate or large barrier to accessing services for the person they care for:
- did not differ significantly between genders (50% of women and 43% of men)
- differed significantly across remoteness areas (51% of carers living in Major cities and 41% of carers living in regional or remote areas).
These data come from AIHW analysis of the Carer Wellbeing Survey (CWS).
The CWS is an annual national survey into the wellbeing of carers and their support services. In the most recent year available (2024), 9,166 carers were surveyed across Australia.
AIHW analysis of CWS data uses weighted percentages. Statistical significance (or non-significance) of differences in proportions between population groups or years for all comparisons of CWS data have been calculated based on a two-proportion z-test using weighted proportions.
While various demographic information is collected in the CWS, those with low counts and/or high relative standard errors are not presented in this report. Data for population groups are reported for this most recent year of data only and where data quality allows. This includes gender and remoteness area.
Remoteness area in the CWS uses the Australian Statistical Geography Standard (ASGS) Remoteness Structure. In this report ‘regional or remote’ incorporates the categories of Inner regional, Outer regional, Remote and Very remote.
While the CWS may under-represent carers who are not well connected with carer organisations and supports, it still provides important insights into the experiences of carers of people living with dementia.
For more detailed data, including the counts used to calculate proportions, see the Supplementary data tables.
For more information, see the Technical notes.