Mainers are waiting a year for dementia evaluations

BANGOR, Maine — Roughly 600 Mainers around the state are waiting a year to get an evaluation at Northern Light Acadia Hospital’s Mood and Memory Clinic. That’s the average wait time that Dr. Clifford Singer, chief of geriatric mental health and neuropsychiatry at Acadia Hospital, estimated. But the range is anywhere from six months to three years, he said Wednesday. His colleague referred a person to the clinic recently who was told the wait would be 22 months, he said. Patients have a 90-minute to two-hour initial appointment that includes various assessments of their medical history and brain and cognitive…