Dementia: Diagnosis
The question
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what is the average waiting time for a dementia diagnosis since 2010 in England, broken down by (a) Integrated Care Board and (b) year.
Answered by Stephen Kinnock
This information is not held centrally.
We remain committed to recovering the dementia diagnosis rate (DDR) to the national ambition of 66.7%. The DDR for patients aged 65 years old and over at the end of October 2025 was 66.5%. The rate is an increase of 0.2 percentage points compared to 66.3% in September 2025. This is an overall increase from March 2020 due to sustained recovery efforts.
To support recovery of the dementia diagnosis rates and implementation of the Dementia Care Pathway, we have developed a memory service dashboard for management information purposes. The aim is to support commissioners and providers with appropriate data and enable targeted support where needed.
To reduce variation in diagnosis rates, the Office for Health Improvement and Disparities’ Dementia Intelligence Network has developed a tool for local systems, which includes an assessment of population characteristics such as rurality and socio-economic deprivation. This enables systems to investigate local variation in diagnosis and take informed action to enhance their diagnosis rates. The tool has been released and is available via the NHS Futures Collaboration platform.
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