UCLA

Background

Because of the COVID-19 pandemic, the ongoing D-CARE pragmatic trial of two models of dementia care management needed to transition to all data collection by telephone.

Methods

For the first 1069 D-CARE participants, we determined the feasibility of administering a short 3-item version of the Montreal Cognitive Assessment (MoCA) to persons with dementia by telephone and examined the correlation with the full 12-item version.

Results

The 3-item version could be administered by telephone in approximately 6 min and was highly correlated with the full MoCA (r = 0.78, p < 0.0001).

Conclusions

This brief version of the MoCA was feasible to collect by telephone and could be used as an alternative to the full MoCA, particularly if the purpose of cognitive assessment is characterization of study participants.