Optimal collaborative care and support for patients with Parkinson’s disease
Driven by the wishes of patients, Radboudumc and Bristol University will evaluate an innovative care model that includes: (a) home-based monitoring and self-management by well-informed patients; (b) easy access to specialised nurses who proactively detect problems (before these become debilitating to patients and costly to society), readily answer questions, organise referrals and coordinate care; (c) regional teams of specialised professionals working close to the patients’ homes; (d) remote support via telemedicine by an expert center. A new public-private partnership supports this integrated approach with state-of-the art technology to facilitate communication, collaboration and home-based care.
This novel approach addresses the urgent need to reform healthcare, to avoid unnecessary disability for patients with chronic conditions and to keep healthcare affordable for future generations. As proof-of-concept, the consortium partners test their approach in 3,500 patients with Parkinson’s disease (PD), being the fastest growing neurological condition worldwide, and also an ideal “model condition” to gain crucial insights for future scaling to many other chronic conditions. The experiment is conducted in both the Netherlands and UK, allowing them to benefit from the rich and complimentary expertise in both countries. They partner with large insurers to document the impact of this novel approach on both health outcomes and costs, and to build a sustainable financial model for this new type of care, to enable a wider implementation to other regions and other patient groups.
Their approach addresses all core needs of patients: they bring care back home (which is a service to patients, while also providing most relevant insights), they empower patients (thus facilitating self-management), they adopt a proactive approach (instead of waiting for medical problems to derail) and they integrate all layers of care (thereby avoiding frustrating searches among both patients and professionals). They expect this integrated model to markedly improve patients’ health and reduce avoidable costs.
