Patterns of psychotropic drug prescriptions and general practice consultations among community-dwelling older people with dementia during the first two years of the COVID-19 pandemic.

"Declarations Ethics approval and consent to participateThis study is a sub study of the COVID-GP study, titled ‘Changes in the use and organization of care in general practice and out-of-hours services: lessons learned from the COVID-19 pandemic’. Study methods were carried out in accordance with the Declaration of Helsinki and other relevant regulations and guidelines. This observational study used pseudonymized electronic health data which could not be traced back to an individual natural person by the researchers. According to Dutch Civil Law (Article 7:458), ethical approval was not required because participants were not subject to procedures or are required to follow rules of behaviours. Accordingly, the Medical Ethics Review Board of the University Medical Centre Groningen has declared that the parent study was non-WMO (Medical Research Involving Human Subjects Act) research (reference number: 2020/309), and had an exemption from ethics review. The patient data is collected according to the opt-out procedure, wherein all patient data is gathered unless the patient explicitly objects to this possibility. Consent for publicationNot applicable. Competing interestsThe authors declare no competing interests. Competing interests The authors declare no competing interests."

"Funding No funding was provided for this study."