In this episode, Matt & Donovan speak with a health economist, Dr. Lauren Nicholas(link is external), whose research investigates how missing a single credit card payment may be a very early indicator of a cognitive issue. Dr. Nicholas is an associate professor in the department of Health Systems Management & Policy at the University of Colorado School of Public Health and has published several studies that examined on how a financial issue might be among the first signs of cognitive decline.

In this episode we’ll speak with Dr. Julie Bynum who was the senior author on a recent study that examined how the likelihood of receiving a diagnosis of dementia has changed over the last decade or so. We’ll discuss what this might mean clinically and what researchers that rely on Medicare data should take-away from this finding. We also will talk in general about the various approaches that exist for identification of dementia in Medicare billing data.

Health data analysts are an elusive bunch in the wild. While we see their names periodically show up as middle authors on manuscripts or in the Acknowledgement section they work largely behind the scenes; yet they play a vital role in conducting research that use large data. In this episode we speak with several health data analysts to better understand the role they play in research and, for all the researchers out there, discuss how to make the process as smooth as possible when working with an analyst.

This week we feature a recent study by Katherine Ornstein and colleagues that was published in the Journal of the American Geriatrics Society. Dr. Ornstein studies family caregiving and the home-based clinical care. The study used Medicare claims linked to the National Health and Aging Trends Study to estimate the degree to which people living with dementia use health services from home. We’ll discuss what exactly home-based health services are (and how they are typically categorized) and discuss the role these services are expected to play for people living with dementia.

For older adults living with dementia, cognitive impairment can lead to susceptibility to fraudulent activities. In this episode we’ll discuss with Dr. Duke Han from the Keck School of Medicine at USC what’s known about the intersection of aging, cognition, and susceptibility to scams.

What he learned may have helped save lives in the U.S.