Benefits and challenges of integrated care model for dementia in China: a scoping review

Dementia has become a growing public health challenge in China, while fragmented healthcare and elderly care systems limit the provision of continuous and coordinated care for people with dementia (PwD). Integrated care has been proposed as a potential approach to address these challenges. This scoping review aimed to map the current status, outcomes, and implementation barriers of integrated care models for PwD in China. Following the JBI methodology for scoping reviews, literature searches were conducted in seven databases, including PubMed, MEDLINE, Web of Science, Scopus, Cochrane Library, China National Knowledge Infrastructure, and Wanfang Database. A total of 31 studies were included, comprising 26 empirical studies, 2 reviews, 2 theoretical studies, and 1 descriptive study. The Social Ecological Model was applied as a multilevel analytical framework to synthesize influencing factors. The findings showed that dementia integrated care in China has mainly developed through four models: collaboration between medical and elderly care institutions, medical units within elderly care facilities, establishing elderly care units within hospitals, family‑based integrated care. Existing evidence suggests that dementia integrated care may improve the quality of life of PwD and reduce caregiver burden. However, its implementation remains challenged by insufficient dementia awareness, limited family involvement, shortages of trained professionals, insufficient community-based services, and inadequate policy support. Future development should prioritize community-based dementia integrated care pathways, strengthen multidisciplinary workforce training, improve cross-sector coordination, and establish sustainable policy and evaluation mechanisms to support high-quality integrated care for PwD in China.