Health and Financial Implications of Early-Stage Alzheimer's Disease and Related Dementias

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Project Summary/Abstract Alzheimer's Disease and Related Dementias (ADRD) are chronic, disabling cognitive impairments that will affect an estimated 12 million Americans by 2050. Undetected, these changes can lead to financial losses from elder abuse and fraud, forgetting to pay bills, and compromised financial decision-making. Often, cognitive impairment is not discovered until after patients have lost significant sums of money and experienced additional functional decline. One possible solution is to recognize the early signs of ADRD in financial data. In pilot data (R21AG053698), we linked 20 years of Medicare claims to quarterly credit reports, demonstrating that ADRD patients without a spouse/partner are more likely to miss bill payments, develop subprime credit, and experience adverse financial events for years prior to their diagnosis, a pattern unique to ADRD. Our prior work suggests that banking and credit data can be used to screen for dementia in the clinical setting, and to protect patients and families from ADRD-linked financial exploitation and other losses, including health effects of dealing with additional financial stress. We propose to test these hypotheses in the following aims, using newly created financial data linkages and partnering with patients, government, and industry: Aim 1: Test whether and when unique financial symptoms of ADRD are present in credit data prior to clinical diagnosis in coupled households. Aim 2: Test whether unique financial symptoms of ADRD can be observed in banking and brokerage data before accountholders experience elder mistreatment, fraud, and diminished capacity. Aim 3: Compare 4-year rates of mortality and hospitalization among spouses of ADRD patients with and without adverse credit events by the time of diagnosis. Aim 4: Assess the feasibility and ethical implications of using financial data to detect ADRD. We will use a 20-year panel of Medicare claims linked to consumer credit reports for Aims 1 and 3 and more than 10 years of account information from a large US bank in Aim 2. We will compare ADRD to other health conditions and sources of elder mistreatment to determine whether it has a unique financial presentation. Our study team includes an interdisciplinary group of physicians, economists, ethicists, and health services researchers with a long history of collaboration in partnership with the Federal Reserve, patient and industry stakeholders. Findings from this study will provide the most comprehensive information to date on the prevalence and magnitude of financial losses and elder mistreatment prior to ADRD diagnosis, as well as their impact on spousal health. This information is critical for many public and private decisions ranging from when and whether to begin screening for ADRD, the potential role of financial institutions in protecting clients who may be unaware of their early cognitive decline, and whether consumer data are sufficiently informative about health to require additional privacy protection.