Care & Caregiving: Healthcare Decision Making

Examine the relationship between health insurance (e.g., employer-sponsored health insurance, Traditional Medicare, Medicare Advantage, TRICARE, privately obtained health insurance) and how persons living with dementia and/or their care partners make healthcare and/or financial decisions along the disease trajectory, including when assessing whether to pursue new treatments or diagnostic and prognostic information.

2029 13.Z In Progress Examine the relationship between health insurance and how persons and/or their care partners make healthcare and/or financial decisions along the disease trajectory, including when to pursue new treatments or diagnostic and prognostic information. DN Relevant 2023 Dementia Care Summit G&Os: 7.1, 7.2, 7.3 Research on Care and Caregiver Support 2024

Support at least 4 research projects or activities that seek to improve understanding of these relationships, such as projects that:

• Analyze how AD/ADRD diagnosis influences healthcare plan choices (e.g., between Traditional Medicare and Medicare Advantage or among Medicare Advantage plans).
• Assess how different payment models influence access to and quality of care, AD/ADRD diagnosis, dementia and comorbidity disease management, palliative care, and end-of-life care.
• Develop, test, and refine approaches to better predict the course of the disease and improve financial and healthcare decision making.
• Analyze patient and family assessment of trade-offs and opportunity costs to pursue treatment and how healthcare providers are supporting this decision making.
• Analyze how persons living with dementia and their families make decisions about new treatments, including but not limited to willingness-to-pay, what side effects and risks they are willing to tolerate, and how they make financial tradeoffs with other care and support services.
• Assess the value of diagnostic innovations and economic implications of blood-based biomarkers.