An assessesment of telephone assistance systems for caregivers of patients with Alzheimer's disease.

Description:
Telephone assistance is a common practice in neurology, although there are only a few studies about this type of healthcare. We have evaluated a Telephone Assistance System (TAS) for caregivers of patients with Alzheimer's disease (AD) from 2 points of view: financially and according to the level of satisfaction of the caregiver.

How to cite:

Garzón-Maldonado FJ, Gutiérrez-Bedmar M, Serrano-Castro V, Requena-Toro MV, Padilla-Romero L, García-Casares N. Evaluación de la asistencia telefónica a demanda en cuidadores de pacientes con enfermedad de Alzheimer. Neurología; 2016. Disponible en: http://www.elsevier.es/es-revista-neurologia-295-avance-resumen-evaluacion-asistencia-telefonica-demanda-cuidadores-S0213485316300408

Document Type:
Article

Creation date:
12/10/2017

PATIENTS AND METHODS:

97 patients with a diagnosis of AD according to NINCDS-ADRDA criteria and their 97 informal caregivers were selected. We studied cost differences between on-site assistance and telephone assistance (TAS) for 12 months. We used a self-administered questionnaire to assess the level of satisfaction of caregivers at the end of the study period.

RESULTS:

TAS savings amounted to 80.05 ± 27.07 euros per user. 73.6% of the caregivers consider TAS a better or much better system than on-site assistance, while only 2.6% of the caregivers considered TAS a worse or much worse system than on-site assistance.