Cognitive impairment indicator for the neuropsychological test batteries in the Canadian Longitudinal Study on Aging: definition and evidence for validity.

BACKGROUND: Prevalence of overall cognitive impairment based on each participant's performance across a neuropsychological battery is challenging; consequently, we define and validate a dichotomous cognitive impairment/no cognitive indicator (CII) using a neuropsychological battery administered in a population-based study. This CII approximates the clinical practice of interpretation across a neuropsychological battery and can be applied to any neuropsychological dataset. METHODS: Using data from participants aged 45-85 in the Canadian Longitudinal Study on Aging receiving a telephone-administered neuropsychological battery (Tracking, N = 21,241) or a longer in-person battery (Comprehensive, N = 30,097), impairment was determined for each neuropsychological test based on comparison with normative data. We adjusted for the joint probability of abnormally low scores on multiple neuropsychological tests using baserates of low scores demonstrated in the normative samples and created a dichotomous CII (i.e., cognitive impairment vs no cognitive impairment). Convergent and discriminant validity of the CII were assessed with logistic regression analyses. RESULTS: Using the CII, the prevalence of cognitive impairment was 4.3% in the Tracking and 5.0% in the Comprehensive cohorts. The CII demonstrated strong convergent and discriminant validity. CONCLUSIONS: The approach for the CII is a feasible method to identify participants who demonstrate cognitive impairment on a battery of tests. These methods can be applied in other epidemiological studies that use neuropsychological batteries.

Methodological considerations when establishing reliable and valid normative data: Canadian Longitudinal Study on Aging (CLSA) neuropsychological battery.

Objective: Creation of normative data with regression corrections for demographic covariates reduces risk of small cell sizes compared with traditional normative approaches. We explored whether methods of correcting for demographic covariates (e.g., full regression models versus hybrid models with stratification and regression) and choice of covariates (i.e., correcting for age with or without sex and/or education correction) impacted reliability and validity of normative data. Method: Measurement invariance for sex and education was explored in a brief telephone-administered cognitive battery from the Canadian Longitudinal Study on Aging (CLSA; after excluding persons with neurological conditions N = 12,350 responded in English and N = 1,760 in French). Results: Measurement invariance was supported in hybrid normative models where different age-based regression models were created for groups based on sex and education level. Measurement invariance was not supported in full regression models where age, sex, and education were simultaneous predictors. Evidence for reliability was demonstrated by precision defined as the 95% inter-percentile range of the 5th percentile. Precision was higher for full regression models than for hybrid models but with negligible differences in precision for the larger English sample. Conclusions: We present normative data for a remotely administered brief neuropsychological battery that best mitigates measurement bias and are precise. In the smaller French speaking sample, only one model reduced measurement bias, but its estimates were less precise, underscoring the need for large sample sizes when creating normative data. The resulting normative data are appended in a syntax file.

The Canadian longitudinal study on aging as a platform for exploring cognition in an aging population.

Objective: We present descriptive information on the cognitive measures used in the Canadian Longitudinal Study on Aging (CLSA) Comprehensive Cohort, relate this to information on these measures in the extant literature, and identify key considerations for their use in research and clinical practice.Method: The CLSA Comprehensive Cohort is composed of 30,097 participants aged 45-85 years at baseline who provided a broad range of sociodemographic, physical, social, and psychological health information via questionnaire and took part in detailed physical and cognitive assessments. Cognitive measures included: the Rey Auditory Verbal Learning Test - immediate and 5-min delayed recall, Animal Fluency, Mental Alternation Test (MAT), Controlled Oral Word Association Test (COWAT), Stroop Test - Victoria Version, Miami Prospective Memory Test (MPMT), and a Choice Reaction Time (CRT) task.Results: CLSA Comprehensive Cohort sample sizes were far larger than previous studies, and performances on the cognitive measures were similar to comparable groups. Within the CLSA Comprehensive Cohort, main effects of age were observed for all cognitive measures, and main effects of language were observed for all measures except the CRT. Interaction effects (language × age) were observed for the MAT, MPMT Event-based score, all time scores on the Stroop Test, and most COWAT scores. Main effects of education were observed for all measures except for the MPMT Time score in the French sample, and interaction effects (age × education) were observed for the RAVLT (immediate and delayed) for the English sample and the Stroop Dot time for the French sample.Conclusion: This examination of the cognitive measures used in the CLSA Comprehensive Cohort lends support to their use in large studies of health and aging. We propose further exploration of the cognitive measures within the CLSA to make this information relevant to and available for clinical practice.

Normative comparison standards for measures of cognition in the Canadian Longitudinal Study on Aging (CLSA): Does applying sample weights make a difference?

Large-scale studies present the opportunity to create normative comparison standards relevant to populations. Sampling weights applied to the sample data facilitate extrapolation to the population of origin, but normative scores are often developed without the use of these sampling weights because the values derived from large samples are presumed to be precise estimates of the population parameter. The present article examines whether applying sample weights in the context of deriving normative comparison standards for measures of cognition would affect the distributions of regression-based normative data when using data from a large population-based study. To address these questions, we examined 3 cognitive measures from the Canadian Longitudinal Study on Aging tracking cohort (N = 14,110, Age 45-84 years at recruitment): Rey Auditory Verbal Learning Test - Immediate Recall, Animal Fluency, and the Mental Alternation Test. The use of sampling weights resulted in similar model parameter estimates to unweighted regression analyses and similar cumulative frequency distributions to the unweighted analyses. We randomly sampled progressively smaller subsets from the full database to test the hypothesis that sampling weights would help maintain the estimates from the full sample, but discovered that the weighted and unweighted estimates were similar and were less precise with smaller samples. These findings suggest that although use of sampling weights can help mitigate biases in data from sampling procedures, the application of weights to adjust for sampling biases do not appreciably impact the normative data, which lends support to the current practice in creation of normative data. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2019 APA, all rights reserved).

Accuracy of Caregiver Proxy Reports of Home Care Service Use.

Although much of the research on service use by older adults with dementia relies on proxy reports by informal caregivers, little research assesses the accuracy of these reports, and that which does exist, does not focus on home care services. This brief report compares proxy reports by family caregivers to those with dementia with provincial Ministry of Health records collected for payment and monitoring. The four home care services examined include home nursing care, adult day care, home support, and respite care. Data come from a province-wide study of caregivers in British Columbia, Canada. Caregiver reports are largely consistent with Ministry records, ranging from 81.0% agreement for home support to 96.6% for respite care. Spouses living with the care recipient (the vast majority of the sample) are the most accurate. Others, whether living with the care recipient or not, have only a 50-50 chance of being correct.

Miami Prospective Memory Test in the Canadian Longitudinal Study on Aging.

OBJECTIVE: The aim of this study was to verify the effect of age, education and sex on Miami Prospective Memory Test (MPMT) performance obtained at baseline of the Canadian Longitudinal Study on Aging (CLSA) by neurologically healthy French- and English-speaking subsamples of participants (N = 18,511). METHOD: The CLSA is a nation-wide large epidemiological study with participants aged 45-85 years old at baseline. The MPMT is an event- and time-based measure of prospective memory, with scores of intention, accuracy and need for reminders, administered as part of the Comprehensive data collection. Participants who did not self-report any conditions that could impact cognition were selected, which resulted in 15,103 English- and 3408 French-speaking participants. The samples are stratified according to four levels of education and four age groups (45-54; 55-64; 65-74; 75+). RESULTS: There is a significant age effect for English- and French-speaking participants on the Event-based, Time-based, and Event- + Time-based scores of the MPMT. The effect of the education level was also demonstrated on the three MPMT scores in the English-speaking group. The score 'Intention to perform' was the most sensitive to the effect of age in both the English and French samples. Sex had no impact on performance on the MPMT. CONCLUSIONS: This study confirms the impact of age and level of education on this new prospective memory task. It informs future research with this measure including the development of normative data in French- and English-speaking Canadians on the Event-based and Time-based MPMT.

Cognitive functioning, cognitive reserve, and residential care placement in patients with Alzheimer's and related dementias.

OBJECTIVE: To test the hypothesis that patients with mild to moderate dementia with higher initial cognitive reserve (higher education levels exhibit faster cognitive decline at later stages of disease progression as they approach residential care (RC) placement. METHOD: Two provincial administrative databases were used. One contained individuals' scores of cognitive functioning (assessed at 6- to 12-month intervals using the Standardized Mini-Mental State Examination, SMMSE, 2007-2014) and education level; the second (BC Ministry of Health Home and Community Care database, 2001-2014) contained individuals' RC placement; N = 10531. RESULTS: During 2.5-0.5 years prior to placement, SMMSE scores of patients with 0-8 years of education dropped slightly (M D 20.6 to 20.0), while patients with 9-12 years and 13+ years of education started higher (M D 21.8 and 21.4), but decreased faster and ended up lower (M D 19.5 and 18.8). Six-months prior to placement, SMMSE scores of all groups dropped almost 2 points. CONCLUSIONS: Once cognitive reserve of more highly educated dementia patients is depleted and they approach RC placement, their cognitive functioning deteriorates faster. Finding effective interventions that maintain or enhance cognitive reserve may increase the time in the community for dementia patients.

Incentive-Based Primary Care: Cost and Utilization Analysis.

CONTEXT: In its fee-for-service funding model for primary care, British Columbia, Canada, introduced incentive payments to general practitioners as pay for performance for providing enhanced, guidelines-based care to patients with chronic conditions. Evaluation of the program was conducted at the health care system level. OBJECTIVE: To examine the impact of the incentive payments on annual health care costs and hospital utilization patterns in British Columbia. DESIGN: The study used Ministry of Health administrative data for Fiscal Year 2010-2011 for patients with diabetes, congestive heart failure, chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, and/or hypertension. In each disease group, cost and utilization were compared across patients who did, and did not, receive incentive-based care. MAIN OUTCOME MEASURES: Health care costs (eg, primary care, hospital) and utilization measures (eg, hospital days, readmissions). RESULTS: After controlling for patients' age, sex, service needs level, and continuity of care (defined as attachment to a general practice), the incentives reduced the net annual health care costs, in Canadian dollars, for patients with hypertension (by approximately Can$308 per patient), chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (by Can$496), and congestive heart failure (by Can$96), but not diabetes (incentives cost about Can$148 more per patient). The incentives were also associated with fewer hospital days, fewer admissions and readmissions, and shorter lengths of hospital stays for all 4 groups. CONCLUSION: Although the available literature on pay for performance shows mixed results, we showed that the funding model used in British Columbia using incentive payments for primary care might reduce health care costs and hospital utilization.

Family physicians enhance end-of-life care: evaluation of a new continuing medical education learning module in British Columbia.

BACKGROUND: The Practice Support Program (PSP) is an innovative peer-to-peer continuing medical education (CME) program that offers full-service family physicians/general practitioners (GPs) in British Columbia (BC), Canada, post-graduate training on a variety of topics. We present the evaluation findings from the PSP learning module on enhancing end-of-life (EOL) care within primary care. METHODS: Pen-and-paper surveys were administered to participants three times: at the beginning of the first training session (n = 608; 69.6 % response rate), at training completion (n = 381, 55.6 % response rate), and via a mail-out survey at 3-6 months following training completion (n = 109, 24.8 % response rate). Surveys asked GPs about current EOL-related practices and confidence in EOL-related skills. At end of training, respondents also provided ratings of satisfaction and perceptions of the module's impact on their practice and their EOL patients. RESULTS: Satisfaction and impact were rated very highly by over 90 % of the GP respondents. Module participation increased the GPs' confidence on EOL-related communication and collaboration skills: e.g., initiating conversations about EOL care, developing an action plan for EOL care, communicating the patient's needs and wishes to other care providers, participating in collaborative care with home and community care nurses, and accessing and referring patients to EOL specialists in the community. Increased confidence was maintained at 3-6 months following completion of training. CONCLUSIONS: The EOL learning module offered by the PSP to family physicians in BC is a successful and impactful CME accredited training module for enhancing end-of-life care in primary care settings.

Financial implications of the continuity of primary care.

BACKGROUND: The objective of this study was to assess the financial implications of the continuity of care, for patients with high care needs, by examining the cost of government-funded health care services in British Columbia, Canada. METHODS: Using British Columbia Ministry of Health administrative databases for fiscal year 2010-2011 and generalized linear models, we estimated cost ratios for 10 cost-related predictor variables, including patients' attachment to the practice. Patients were selected and divided into groups on the basis of their Resource Utilization Band (RUB) and placement in provincial registries for 8 chronic conditions (1,619,941 patients). The final dataset included all high- and very-high-care-needs patients in British Columbia (ie, RUB categories 4 and 5) in 1 or more of the 8 registries who met the screening criteria (222,779 patients). RESULTS: Of the 10 predictors, across 8 medical conditions and both RUBs, patients' attachment to the practice had the strongest relationship to costs (correlations = -0.168 to -0.322). Higher attachment was associated with lower costs. Extrapolation of the findings indicated that an increase of 5% in the overall attachment level, for the selected high-care-needs patients, could have resulted in an estimated cost avoidance of $142 million Canadian for fiscal year 2010-2011. CONCLUSIONS: Continuity of care, defined as a patient's attachment to his/her primary care practice, can reduce health care costs over time and across chronic conditions. Health care policy makers may wish to consider creating opportunities for primary care physicians to increase the attachment that their high-care-needs patients have to their practices.

Change and predictors of change in social skills of nursing home residents with dementia.

BACKGROUND: Social skills are of primary importance for those with dementia and their care providers, yet we know little about the extent to which basic social skills can be maintained over time and the predictors of change. METHODS: A total of 18 nursing homes with 149 newly admitted residents with moderate to severe dementia, 195 direct care staff, and 135 family members, in British Columbia, Canada, contributed data on change in social skills from admission to 6 months and 1 year later. RESULTS: Three-quarters of residents maintained or improved their basic social skills during both the time periods. Decline was explained primarily by cognitive status at the time of admission, notably present orientation. However, staff-to-resident communication becomes more important over time. CONCLUSIONS: Social skills appear to present an opportunity to maintain interaction with these residents. The findings also suggest that a focus on the present orientation before and following admission and on staff-to-resident communication may be beneficial.

Mental health practice and attitudes of family physicians can be changed!

OBJECTIVES: An adult mental health module was developed in British Columbia to increase the use of evidence-based screening and cognitive behavioral self-management tools as well as medications that fit within busy family physician time constraints and payment systems. Aims were to enhance family physician skills, comfort, and confidence in diagnosing and treating mental health patients using the lens of depression; to improve patient experience and partnership; to increase use of action or care plans; and to increase mental health literacy and comfort of medical office assistants. METHODS: The British Columbia Practice Support Program delivered the module using the Plan-Do-Study-Act cycle for learning improvement. Family physicians were trained in adult mental health, and medical office assistants were trained in mental health first aid. Following initial testing, the adult mental health module was implemented across the province. RESULTS: More than 1400 of the province's 3300 full-service family physicians have completed or started training. Family physicians reported high to very high success implementing self-management tools into their practices and the overall positive impact this approach had on patients. These measures were sustained or improved at 3 to 6 months after completion of the module. An Opening Minds Survey for health care professionals showed a decrease in stigmatizing attitudes of family physicians. CONCLUSIONS: The adult mental health module is changing the way participants practice. Office-based primary mental health care can be improved through reimbursed training and support for physicians to implement practical, time-efficient tools that conform to payment schemes. The module provided behavior-changing tools that seem to be changing stigmatizing attitudes towards this patient population. This unexpected discovery has piqued the interest of stigma experts at the Mental Health Commission of Canada.

Program evaluation of a child and youth mental health training program for family physicians in british columbia.

INTRODUCTION: This brief report presents findings from the program evaluation of a portion of an educational program developed to support family physicians in improving their mental health care competencies in children and youth in British Columbia. METHOD: The Child and Youth Mental Health (CYMH) learning module is part of a broader initiative from the Practice Support Program (PSP) of the British Columbia Medical Association and was created specifically to assist family physicians in improving their competencies in the identification, diagnosis and delivery of best evidence-based treatments for children and youth exhibiting the most common mental disorders that can be effectively treated in most primary care practices. RESULTS: The initial results from the program evaluation demonstrate a substantial improvement in family physicians' knowledge of child and youth mental disorders and their self-rated clinical confidence in identifying and treating (both pharmacologically and psychotherapeutically) the most common child and youth mental disorders. Furthermore, because the training protocol involves a team-based approach which includes specialist physicians as well as school counsellors and human services providers, collaboration between primary practice and other providers is enhanced. CONCLUSION: The initial results encourage broader roll-out and further evaluation of this program on a wider scale.

INTRODUCTION: Ce bref rapport présente les résultats de l'évaluation d'une portion d'un programme éducatif mis au point pour soutenir les médecins de famille dans le perfectionnement de leurs compétences en soins de santé mentale des enfants et des adolescents de la Colombie-Britannique. MÉTHODE: Le module d'apprentissage Santé mentale de l'enfant et de l'adolescent (SMEA) fait partie d'une initiative plus vaste du programme de soutien de la pratique (PSP) de l'association médicale de la Colombie-Britannique. Il a été créé spécifiquement pour aider les médecins de famille à perfectionner leurs compétences en matière d'identification, de diagnostic, et de prestation des meilleurs traitements fondés sur des données probantes pour les enfants et les adolescents présentant les troubles mentaux les plus communs qui peuvent être traités efficacement dans la plupart des pratiques de soins de première ligne. RÉSULTATS: Les premiers résultats de l'évaluation du programme démontrent que les médecins de famille ont substantiellement amélioré leurs connaissances des troubles mentaux pédiatriques ainsi que leur confiance clinique autoévaluée de pouvoir identifier et traiter (de manière tant pharmacologique que psychothérapeutique) les troubles mentaux pédiatriques les plus communs. En outre, parce que le protocole de formation comporte une approche en équipe qui comprend des médecins spécialistes ainsi que des conseillers scolaires et des prestataires de services humains, la collaboration entre les pratiques de soins de première ligne et les autres prestataires est améliorée. CONCLUSION: Les premiers résultats incitent à un déploiement élargi et à une autre évaluation de ce programme à plus grande échelle.

Improving primary care in British Columbia, Canada: evaluation of a peer-to-peer continuing education program for family physicians.

BACKGROUND: An innovative program, the Practice Support Program (PSP), for full-service family physicians and their medical office assistants in primary care practices was recently introduced in British Columbia, Canada. The PSP was jointly approved by both government and physician groups, and is a dynamic, interactive, educational and supportive program that offers peer-to-peer training to physicians and their office staff. Topic areas range from clinical tools/skills to office management relevant to General Practitioner (GP) practices and "doable in real GP time". PSP learning modules consist of three half-day learning sessions interspersed with 6-8 week action periods. At the end of the third learning session, all participants were asked to complete a pen-and-paper survey that asked them to rate (a) their satisfaction with the learning module components, including the content and (b) the perceived impact the learning has had on their practices and patients. METHODS: A total of 887 GPs (response rates ranging from 26.0% to 60.2% across three years) and 405 MOAs (response rates from 21.3% to 49.8%) provided responses on a pen-and-paper survey administered at the last learning session of the learning module. The survey asked respondents to rate (a) their satisfaction with the learning module components, including the content and (b) the perceived impact the learning has had on their practices and patients. The psychometric properties (Chronbach's alphas) of the satisfaction and impact scales ranged from .82 to .94. RESULTS: Evaluation findings from the first three years of the PSP indicated consistently high satisfaction ratings and perceived impact on GP practices and patients, regardless of physician characteristics (gender, age group) or work-related variables (e.g., time worked in family practice). The Advanced Access Learning Module, which offers tools to improve office efficiencies, decreased wait times for urgent, regular and third next available appointments by an average of 1.2, 3.3, and by 3.4 days across all physicians. For the Chronic Disease Management module, over 87% of all GP respondents developed a CDM patient registry and reported being able to take better care of their patients. After attending the Adult Mental Health module: 94.1% of GPs agreed that they felt more comfortable helping patients who required mental health care; over 82% agreed that their skills and their confidence in diagnosing and treating mental health conditions had improved; and 41.0% agreed that their frequency of prescribing medications, if appropriate, had decreased. Additionally for the Adult Mental Health module, a 3-6 month follow-up survey of the GPs indicated that the implemented changes were sustained over time. CONCLUSION: GP and medical office assistant participant ratings show that the PSP learning modules were consistently successful in providing GPs and their staff with new learning that was relevant and could be implemented and used in "real-GP-time".

Does acquisition of Greeble expertise in prosopagnosia rule out a domain-general deficit?

According to the expertise account of face specialization, a deficit that affects general expertise mechanisms should similarly impair the expert individuation of both faces and other visually homogeneous object classes. To test this possibility, we attempted to train a prosopagnosic patient, LR, to become a Greeble expert using the standard Greeble expertise-training paradigm (Gauthier & Tarr, 2002). Previous research demonstrated that LR's prosopagnosia was related to an inability to simultaneously use multiple features in a speeded face recognition task (Bukach, Bub, Gauthier, & Tarr, 2006). We hypothesized that LR's inability to use multiple face features would manifest in his acquisition of Greeble expertise, even though his basic object recognition is unimpaired according to standard neuropsychological testing. Although LR was eventually able to reach expertise criterion, he took many more training sessions than controls, suggesting use of an abnormal strategy. To further explore LR's Greeble processing strategies, we assessed his ability to use multiple Greeble features both before and after Greeble training. LR's performance in two versions of this task demonstrates that, even after training, he relies heavily on a single feature to identify Greebles. This correspondence between LR's face recognition and post-training Greeble recognition supports the idea that impaired face recognition is simply the most visible symptom of a more general object recognition impairment in acquired prosopagnosia.

Improving mental healthcare by primary care physicians in British Columbia.

This article describes a new and innovative training program to assist family physicians to better care for their patients with mental health conditions. Trained family physician leaders train other family physicians. The training package includes a wide range of tools that can be used by physicians in their own offices. Preliminary results indicate that physicians want to be trained, and data indicate a high degree of success for the training module. Some 91% of physicians who attended the training indicated that it had improved their practice, and 94% indicated that it had improved patient care. The training materials are online for those who wish to learn more.

Demographic corrections appear to compromise classification accuracy for severely skewed cognitive tests.

Demographic corrections for cognitive tests should improve classification accuracy by reducing age or education biases, but empirical support has been equivocal. Using a simulation procedure, we show that creating moderate or extreme skewness in cognitive tests compromises the classification accuracy of demographic corrections, findings that appear replicated within clinical data for the few neuropsychological test scores with an extreme degree of skew. For most neuropsychological tests, the dementia classification accuracy of raw and demographically corrected scores was equivalent. These findings suggest that the dementia classification accuracy of demographic corrections is robust to slight degrees of skew (i.e., skewness <1.5).

Evaluation of healthcare services: asking the right questions to develop new policy and program-relevant knowledge for decision-making.

This article presents a framework for thinking about the key questions that need to be answered to develop new policy and program-relevant knowledge that can be used to make more informed decisions. It is a primer for administrators, policy makers and others about how to identify the knowledge they need to make decisions regarding new or existing programs. The article covers three related dimensions in evaluation: types of evaluations, key domains of inquiry and generic research questions. While the questions are generic, they can be readily adapted to any new and/or existing healthcare program evaluation. Examples of how the generic questions can be adapted to primary healthcare clinics and home care are presented.

Increasing value for money in the Canadian healthcare system: new findings on the contribution of primary care services.

This article presents a major new finding in regard to the value for money of primary care services. It was found that the more higher-care-needs patients were attached to a primary care practice, the lower the costs were for the overall healthcare system (for the total of medical services, hospital services and drugs). The majority of the cost reductions stemmed from decreases in the costs of hospital services. Thus, for higher-care-needs patients, it appears that the nature of the physician-patient relationship is related to reductions in hospital costs. For example, for very-high-care-needs diabetic patients, the average annual hospital cost in fiscal 2007-2008 for those in the lowest attachment group was $16,988, whereas the hospital costs for those in the highest attachment group was $5,909. The results obtained were even more striking for patients with congestive heart failure. A series of multiple regression analyses were conducted, and the results were very consistent: attachment to practice was the best predictor in regard to cost and was a more significant predictor than other variables that were related to healthcare costs, such as age. These findings support the general literature on the benefits of primary care and the continuity of care.

Was that part of the story or did i just think so? Age and cognitive status differences in inference and story recognition.

This study expanded the inference and story recognition literature by investigating differences within the older age range, differences as a result of cognitive impairment, no dementia (CIND), and applying signal detection procedures to the analysis of accuracy data. Old-old adults and those with more severe CIND showed poorer ability to accurately recognize inferences, and less sensitivity in discriminating between statement types. Results support the proposal that participants used two different recognition strategies. Old-old and CIND adults may be less able to recognize that something plausible with an event may not have actually occurred.