Enhancing Hospital Care for Patients With Parkinson Disease: Patricia Clark, CNP

WATCH TIME: 5 minutes

"We try to intervene if say someone is in the emergency room for several hours; we make sure that, as long as it's not contraindicated, that they're still getting their home regimen, they're not missing doses, and we make sure that patients aren't ordered or given any contraindicated medication."

The Cleveland Clinic (CCF)'s Parkinson's Inpatient Program comprises of system and patient level interventions aimed to promote recovery in patients with Parkinson disease (PD). System level interventions take place at both enterprise and individual hospital levels. Enterprise level changes comprised of electronic health record modifications including best practice alerts and notification of PD contraindicated medications. Furthermore, hospital level interventions included creation of a PD inpatient census, a dedicated PD inpatient consult team, clinician education, changes in PD medication stocking/administration, and changes to Speech Therapy documentation templates.

A new study showed that the CCF's Parkinson's Inpatient Program was an efficient and effective way to successfully identify and prevent or correct common clinical errors that could lead to poor outcomes and increased complications in hospitalized patients with PD. These findings were presented at the 3rd Annual Advanced Therapeutics in Movement and Related Disorders (ATMRD) Congress, held by the PMD Alliance from June 22-25, 2024, by lead author Patricia Clark, CNP, and colleagues. Study authors noted that the impact of these achievements on patient outcomes such as discharge disposition and length of stay will be analyzed as intervention and data collection continues through the end of June 2024.1

During the Congress, Clark, a nurse practitioner of the Center for Neurological Restoration at the Cleveland Clinic, sat down with NeurologyLive^® in an interview to discuss how the inpatient team works toward ensuring patients with PD receive their home medication regimen in the hospital. She also talked about the measures being taken to prevent patients with PD from receiving contraindicated medications in such settings. Moreover, Clark spoke about the percentage of cases that required intervention from the inpatient team and named some of the common interventions.

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REFERENCES
1. Clark PA, Brooks A, Fernandez HH, et al. Improving the Quality and Safety of Care for Hospitalized Patients with Parkinson's Disease. Presented at: ATMRD; June 22-25, 2024; Washington, DC.