How to organize multispecialty care for patients with Parkinson's disease

Abstract

Neurodegenerative disorders like Parkinson's disease (PD) typically include a broad range of motor and non-motor symptoms. Disease manifestations vary considerably across individuals and, importantly, the individual needs and priorities are highly diverse among patients. It is widely felt that this multifaceted nature of PD calls for a team-oriented and personalized model of care. However, such a multispecialty approach is complex to design, and there are no evidence-based templates that describe how multispecialty care should be organized. Here we elaborate on the various challenges associated with the organization of team-based care. We illustrate this by highlighting new research evidence for two different models of multispecialty team care in PD. We also discuss several critical components of multispecialty care, including composition of the team, collaboration forms between team members, and implementation of multispecialty care within everyday healthcare settings. We close by sharing some of the lessons learned from recent clinical trials on the clinical effectiveness of multispecialty team interventions in PD. This review underscores that designing multispecialty care within the setting of a modern healthcare system is almost as complex as PD itself, and that its scientific evaluation comes with significant challenges.

Keywords: Delivery of healthcare; Health services research; Integrated delivery of healthcare; Multidisciplinary care; Neurorehabilitation; Parkinson's disease.