Dysphagia Evaluation in a Multidisciplinary VA Cognitive Care Clinic

The VA Cognitive Care Clinic (CCC) provides comprehensive evaluation and longitudinal treatment for older Veterans with neurocognitive disorders and their caregivers through multidisciplinary care including geriatrics, palliative medicine, neuropsychology, and social work. Speech‐language pathology (SLP) was recently incorporated into the CCC team in response to calls for more proactive approaches to diagnosis and management of dysphagia (swallowing dysfunction) in persons with dementia. While dysphagia is estimated to be highly prevalent in this population, prior work has been limited by inadequate dementia characterization. The purpose of this novel quality improvement project was to provide descriptive information regarding the occurrence of dysphagia in persons with dementia seen in CCC.