Geographical variation in health service use by people living with dementia

This report explores the use of residential respite care among 2 groups of people living with dementia (see Methods section):

• “Community 2019” group: people living in the community in 2019, who did not enter permanent residential aged care in 2019 or 2020
• “Subsequent PRAC” group: people living in the community for all or some of 2019, who did enter permanent residential aged care later in 2019 or in 2020.

The use of residential respite care by people who did not enter permanent care in the subsequent 12 months was low overall (an average 5.4% of people).

The use of residential respite care was more common for people who did enter permanent care in the subsequent 12 months (an average 70% of people). 

For both groups, people who used residential respite care had an average of 1.5 stays per person (see Table S5.1 for details).

Figure 4.5: Percentage of people in the dementia cohort with at least one residential respite care stay, by place of residence, SA4 region of residence and sex, 2019­–2020

Notes

1. The dementia study cohort refers to 158,730 people aged 30 and over who were living in Australia in 2019 and had a dementia record in the NIHSI.
2. The geographies in this report are based on where a person lived, not where they received services. Data are only presented for states/territories with hospital data in the NIHSI.  
3. PRAC = permanent residential aged care.
4. ‘Percentage’ is the proportion of people in the dementia cohort with at least one service recorded in the NIHSI in 2019.
5. Age-standardised rates were calculated where population and service counts allowed (see Data table S5.1).
6. A region is blank if a value could not be published due to data quality or confidentiality concerns.

Data tables: Residential respite care use among people in the dementia cohort