Dementia drugs
At a glance
- Medicare prescriptions, 2024
- 13,777,730
- Medicare drug cost
- $416.7M
- Average cost per prescription
- $30.25
- Clinicians who prescribed it
- 137,102
Where it is prescribed
What these drugs are
Donepezil, memantine and similar drugs can ease memory and thinking symptoms of Alzheimer’s disease for a time; they do not stop the disease.
Who prescribes it
- Internal Medicine 23.1%
- Family Medicine 22.3%
- Neurology 19.5%
- Nurse Practitioners 17.1%
- Physician Assistants 4.0%
- Geriatric Medicine 3.7%
- Psychiatry 2.8%
- General Practice 2.3%
- Psychiatric Nurse Practitioners 1.7%
- Hospitalist 0.7%
- Physical Medicine & Rehabilitation (PM&R) 0.3%
- Cardiology 0.2%
Share of Medicare prescriptions written by each specialty.
Drugs in this group
| Drug | Prescriptions |
|---|---|
| Donepezil Hcl (Adlarity, Aricept) | 7,417,900 |
| Memantine Hcl (Namenda Xr) | 5,547,141 |
| Rivastigmine (Exelon) | 281,071 |
| Rivastigmine Tartrate (Rivastigmine) | 255,889 |
| Galantamine Hbr (Galantamine Er, Galantamine Hydrobromide) | 185,720 |
| Memantine Hcl/Donepezil Hcl (Namzaric) | 90,765 |
Drugs filled in fewer than 1,000 counties have no page of their own; their national totals are shown here.
Industry payments about this drug
No industry payments to clinicians named this drug in 2025.
Recalls and shortages
Not on the FDA drug shortage list.
No FDA-reported recalls since 2020.
Sources: CMS Medicare Part D Prescribers by Provider and Drug (2024; prescriptions include refills, and CMS hides counts under 11 per prescriber); U.S. Food and Drug Administration, openFDA (drug labels, NDC directory, enforcement reports, drug shortages); CMS Open Payments 2025; ClinicalTrials.gov. General information only, not medical advice; not yet reviewed by our medical reviewer.