Overview
The Care Ecosystem is a model of dementia care designed to provide personalized, cost-efficient care for persons with dementia and their caregivers. This telephone and web-based intervention was developed and studied across California, Nebraska, and Iowa via an award from the Center for Medicare and Medicaid Innovation from 2014–2018 and continues to be studied with funding from the National Institute for Health.
We’re going to work on this until patients across the world are getting better dementia care.
Project Details
The Care Ecosystem was designed to enable health systems and clinics to provide dementia-capable care to the growing population affected by dementia, as well as their caregivers.
Launched by UCSF’s Edward and Pearl Fein Memory and Aging Center in 2013, the Care Ecosystem program has demonstrated significantly promising results for providing increased levels of important support services for dementia caregivers and patients.
The program achieves this with relatively simple technology by today’s standards: regularly scheduled, personalized phone calls, along with directing caregivers to important web-based services that can help address the challenges and issues they typically face.
The Care Ecosystem takes a team-based approach in which advanced-practice nurses, pharmacists, and social workers who have dementia expertise collaborate with care team navigators. These CTNs are unlicensed, but trained, and caregivers are encouraged to call them whenever a question or concern arises related to dementia care.
Members involved
Gallery
A Care Team Navigator in the Care Ecosystem
