Cognitive Testing Over the Phone

Contributed by: Dennis Fortier, President, Medical Care Corporation
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According to research scheduled for publication in the International Journal of Geriatric Psychiatry, administering standard cognitive tests over the phone yields comparable results to in-person administration.This finding could have many positive implications for research as well as for clinical care.

In the research field, recruiting subjects for a study could be completed more rapidly and at a lower cost if more of the enrollment criteria, such as cognitive status, could be ascertained over the phone. In addition, phone-based assessments could also aid in the challenge of maintaining subjects throughout the course of a study when many follow-up assessments are required. This inconvenience is one that causes some subjects to drop out of longitudinal studies.

In terms of dispensing clinical care, phone-based assessment will be useful for patients who have difficulty getting to a physician's office due to poor health or even due to the long distance many need to travel in rural areas.

Such an approach will never replace the central role of in-person assessments but might serve as an efficient complement to standard practice in many instances.