Using Healthcare Redesign to Identify Medication Management Issues in Parkinson's Disease

Parkinson's disease (PD) is a neurodegenerative disorder that is predominantly controlled through pharmacotherapy. People with PD have highly complex medication regimens that are often poorly managed during hospital admissions. This project aims to understand the issues experienced by patients with PD and healthcare staff that impacted their medication management during their hospital admission at a tertiary metropolitan hospital in New South Wales, Australia.

This project focuses on the mixed-methods diagnostics phase of the healthcare redesign approach to health service improvement, utilising organisational data, online surveys, interviews, and focus groups.

The findings from this project highlight key areas to address to improve the medication management of patients with PD admitted to hospital. The organisational data (n = 222) showed that the identification of PD patients, untimely medication reviews, prescribing errors, and untimely medication administration all contributed to poor patient experience. The staff surveys (n = 81) highlighted that a lack of knowledge of PD medications and poor patient identification impacted patient experience. The patient surveys (n = 18) and patient interviews (n = 16) suggested that confidence around medication management and administration timing could be improved.

Poor PD medication management in hospital impacts the patient experience and should be improved to ensure better outcomes for patients and the health services.