New Alzheimer’s treatments are exposing gaps in our health system. The specialized care required to diagnose and treat the disease means people living in rural areas will have a much harder time getting timely support.
Writing in the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, Matt Espenshade, President of the Pennsylvania State Grange, discusses his experience with his mother’s diagnosis and voices concern about access to care for people living in rural Pennsylvania.
My family is truly blessed to have a world class facility dedicated not only to medical treatment, but research and instruction, just 20 minutes from home. Millions of Americans living in rural areas are not so lucky…
…Across the country, people living in rural areas are nearly twice as likely to die from Alzheimer’s as those living in urban areas. And research by the University of Iowa found that agricultural workers are 46% more likely to develop dementia. At the same time, these communities have diminished access to effective treatments for these conditions.
Just look at Pennsylvania, which has two world-class centers of care in Philadelphia and Pittsburgh. As with Hershey, these facilities run clinical trials for new technologies and treatments and provide top notch care. They’re often among the first in the world to validate medical breakthroughs. But about a quarter of our state’s population, 3.4 million people, live in rural counties. For some, it’s an 8-hour roundtrip to access specialty care.
When it comes to Alzheimer’s, this is a tremendous barrier. Unless you’re personally affected, it’s hard to grasp the complexities that come with the disease. New therapies aren’t a cure, but they can slow progression and allow a person to live independently for longer periods. But you have to catch the disease early, when a person has what’s called mild cognitive impairment, to get the most benefit. The sooner a person can start therapy after diagnosis, the greater the therapeutic effect. And at a certain point, therapies no longer appear to help…
…If we want to ensure the benefits of new Alzheimer’s therapies are shared across Pennsylvania, streamlining the process of care from detection to diagnosis to treatment is essential. Programs like Georgia Memory Net are starting to do this, and could be a model for our state. GMN is a project of the state Department of Human Services that trains physicians how to screen for Alzheimer’s and created seven Memory Assessment Clinics across the state to coordinate care for patients.
Pennsylvania needs to create a referral system that minimizes barriers for people in rural areas, beginning by supporting existing specialty centers to be able to meet their local needs. Connecting residents from anywhere in the state to integrated care requires building the training and capacity of our rural doctors and healthcare systems. Without a systematic approach and a deliberate effort from state leaders, only a few very highly motivated patients will receive the care they need, when they need it.
You can read the full article at the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette.