Objective: To evaluate if interdisciplinary care (iCare) is present in the management of Parkinson’s disease (PD) among PD Allied Health Professionals (AHP) at a centre of PD excellence in Singapore.

Background: Field experts encourage integrative expert PD assessment to aid holistic management of these individuals. Integrated multidisciplinary care, where management goals are patient centred (iCare PD), demonstrated improvement in the quality of life and activities of daily living of these individuals. Despite having strong multidisciplinary members in the centre of PD excellence investigated herein, the centre has yet been evaluated if the care model practised is integrative in nature.

Methods: The study was carried out at a centre of PD excellence in Singapore. The centre’s AHP departments consist of Physiotherapy (PT), Occupational Therapy (OT) and Speech Therapy (ST). Individuals with PD who are receiving services from the 3 departments are included in the data collection between January to March 2015. Cross matches were made within the department to remove individuals with repeated visits in the 3 month period. Individuals who see 2 or 3 AHPs were identified to determine the degree of interdisciplinary management practiced in the centre.

Results: 492 clients were seen by the AHPs over the 3 months in the beginning of the year. ST saw the most number of individuals with PD in the centre (63.6%), followed by PT then OT. 13% of the individuals were reviewed by both PT and OT. Only 1 client saw all the 3 AHPs. The results of this pilot study differ greatly from the literature. Firstly, most of the clients were receiving ST as compared to another study conducted in Netherlands where PT was more commonly received by the locals. This could be due to the difference in cultural perception towards management of neurodegenerative disease. Secondly, this study explored the degree of interdisciplinary care in the disease management for the first time. The current model is more multidisciplinary than interdisciplinary. It is not within the objectives of this study to investigate the barriers to iCare PD but could be explored later.

Conclusions: iCare PD has not been practised in the centre yet. The results of this pilot small scale study could aid in identifying the barriers towards the move from multidisciplinary to interdisciplinary model. It adds on to the limited literature in determining if iCare PD could be the ideal model of care for the individuals with PD.

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MDS Abstracts - https://www.mdsabstracts.org/abstract/has-icare-pd-started-in-singapore/