Evidence for models of integrated dementia care: a scoping review protocol

There is a substantial and increasing need for efficient, high quality integrated dementia care to serve our ageing population, but a dearth of literature regarding best practices for development and evaluation of these service models. The goal, therefore, of this scoping review is to systematically examine the literature regarding existing integrated models of dementia care in order to map the current state of the literature. We will also examine how models of integrated dementia care are evaluated, and to what extent they align with best practices for integrated care in a Canadian context. We will conduct a scoping review based on the methods suggested by Arksey and O'Malley (2005) and updated by Levac et al. (2010), using the following databases: MEDLINE, EMBASE, the Cochrane Library, Cumulative Index to Nursing and Allied Health Literature (CINAHL), PsycINFO and Google Scholar. We will supplement our findings by a systematic search of relevant grey literature. We will include studies that (i) describe a model of integrated care in the health and/or social care sectors, (ii) include an assessment of outcome, and (iii) are published in 2019 or later. Integrated care is a complex concept, and, in order to provide generalizable evidence, studies evaluating service models of integrated care must be specific to the population being served and carried out in a rigorous and reproducible manner. This scoping review is a foundational step in the creation of a framework for developing and evaluating systems of integrated dementia care in Canada. Open Science Framework ( https://doi.org/10.17605/OSF.IO/7SDKW ).