Objective: The objective of this study was to measure agreement between three treatment decisional capacity assessment instruments in mild to moderate dementia.
Method: Subjects (N=79) were recruited from the community. Rating agreement was evaluated with kappa statistics.
Results: Three-way agreement was fair for overall capacity (kappa=0.451), very good for understanding (0.618), very poor for choice (0.158), and no better than chance for reasoning and appreciation. Pairwise agreement showed a similar pattern.
Conclusions: With the exception of understanding, current treatment decisional capacity assessment instruments do not consistently agree with one another in assessing treatment decision abilities.