Proactive and Integrated Management and Empowerment in Parkinson’s Disease: designing a new model of care

Parkinson’s disease is the second most common neurodegenerative condition after Alzheimer’s disease. The number of patients will rise dramatically due to ageing of the population, and possibly also due to environmental issues. It is widely recognised that the current models of care for people with Parkinson’s disease or a form of atypical parkinsonism lack continuity, are reactive to problems rather than proactive, and do not adequately support individuals to self-manage. Integrated models of care have been developed for other chronic conditions, with a range of positive effects. A multidisciplinary team of professionals in the United Kingdom and the Netherlands, all with a long history of caring for patients with movement disorders, used knowledge of deficiencies with the current model of care, an understanding of integrated care in chronic disease and the process of logic modelling, to develop a novel approach to the care of patients with Parkinson’s disease. We propose a new model, termed PRIME Parkinson (Proactive and Integrated Management and Empowerment in Parkinson’s Disease), which is designed to manage problems proactively, deliver integrated, multidisciplinary care and empower patients and their carers. It has five main components: 1) personalised care management, 2) education and empowerment of patients and carers, 3) empowerment of healthcare professionals, 4) a population health approach, and 5) support of the previous four components by patient and professional friendly technology. Having mapped the processes required for the success of this initiative, there is now a requirement to assess its effect on health-related and quality of life outcomes as well as determining its cost-effectiveness. In the next phase of the project, we will implement PRIME Parkinson in selected areas of the United Kingdom and the Netherlands.