Enhancing Multidisciplinary Care for Neuromuscular Disorders: Amanda Peltier, MD

WATCH TIME: 5 minutes

“Being able to offer a multidisciplinary care center, where you have all the providers involved in their care in one center one day is really important for them, and it makes their life so much easier. Having providers who know what their disorders are like [is critical].”

Research shows that multidisciplinary care for both adult and pediatric neuromuscular disorders is associated with improved quality of life, resource utilization, and health outcomes. According to a review published in Muscle & Nerve, this type of care approach is delivered in multidisciplinary clinics that coordinate care across multiple specialties, reducing the burden of travel and streamlining care.¹ In addition, these care setting enable the integration of clinical research, patient advocacy, and care innovation such as telehealth.²

Chair leader Amanda Peltier, MD, gave a talk on the multidisciplinary approach to adult patients, and the possibilities versus realities of treatment in a session presented at the 2024 Muscular Dystrophy Association (MDA) Clinical and Scientific Conference, held March 3-6, in Orlando, Florida. The session focused on clinical approaches to streamlining care using a multidisciplinary approach to meet the needs of patients with neuromuscular diseases, which also included a talk from Urvi Desai, MD, FAAN, who covered the pediatric aspects in this area.

Peltier, a professor of neurology at Vanderbilt University Medical Center, sat down with NeurologyLive® at the conference to discuss how funding constraints impact the sustainability of multidisciplinary care centers for neuromuscular disorders. She also spoke about current challenges hospital administrators face in accommodating multidisciplinary care teams in limited spaces. In addition, Peltier talked about how additional healthcare professionals could enhance the effectiveness of multidisciplinary care for neuromuscular disorders.

REFERENCES
1. Paganoni S, Nicholson K, Leigh F, et al. Developing multidisciplinary clinics for neuromuscular care and research. Muscle Nerve. 2017;56(5):848-858. doi:10.1002/mus.25725
2. Gwathmey K, Heiman-Patterson TD. Multidisciplinary Clinics in Neuromuscular Medicine. Continuum (Minneap Minn). 2023;29(5):1585-1594. doi:10.1212/CON.0000000000001340