New government website to name and shame doctors over who have poor rates of dementia diagnosis

Critics accuse the Government of passing the blame on to local doctors and politicians for failures in dementia care

The new website will be used to try and name and shame doctors who have poor rates of dementia diagnosis (Getty Images)

The Government is to launch a new website to try and name and shame doctors who have poor rates of dementia diagnosis, The Independent has learnt.

Under the plans people will be able to put in their postcode and see how good dementia diagnosis is their local area.

The website is also designed to show how good individual local authorities are at providing services to dementia patients such as memory clinics.

But critics accused the Government of passing the blame on to local doctors and politicians for failures in dementia care – rather than providing the resources to address the problem – which ministers claim is a priority for them.

Liz Kendall MP, Labour's Shadow Minister for Care and Older People said: “If David Cameron was serious about improving the quality of dementia care, he would not have cut council budgets for older people's social care to the bone.

“And if Jeremy Hunt was serious about improving transparency, he would be publishing how many 15 minute home visits there are in each area, and how many people with dementia have unnecessarily ended up in hospital or having to go into a care home because they can't get the help they need to stay living in their own homes.

“Dementia is indeed one of the biggest challenges facing this country - but under David Cameron's watch care for people with dementia is getting worse not better.”