Results Summary and Professional Abstract
Related PCORI Dissemination and Implementation Project
Implementing Team-based Outpatient Palliative Care in Parkinson Foundation Centers of Excellence
Journal Articles
| Article Highlight: This project compared the effectiveness of team-based outpatient palliative care to current standards of care for people living with Parkinson’s disease. The palliative care intervention included quarterly visits with a team that included a neurologist, social worker, chaplain, and nurse who used checklists to assess and manage palliative care. The project team reported in JAMA Neurology that, compared to usual care that used a neurologist and primary care practitioner, patients receiving palliative care at six months had improvements in their quality of life, symptom control, grief, and advance care planning. Caregivers had improved anxiety and spiritual well-being at six months and reduced caregiving burden at 12 months. A related editorial calls palliative care “the next frontier” in treating Parkinson’s disease. |
Related Articles
| This project's final research report is expected to be available by September 2020. |
Peer-Review Summary
Peer review of PCORI-funded research helps make sure the report presents complete, balanced, and useful information about the research. It also assesses how the project addressed PCORI’s Methodology Standards. During peer review, experts read a draft report of the research and provide comments about the report. These experts may include a scientist focused on the research topic, a specialist in research methods, a patient or caregiver, and a healthcare professional. These reviewers cannot have conflicts of interest with the study.
The peer reviewers point out where the draft report may need revision. For example, they may suggest ways to improve descriptions of the conduct of the study or to clarify the connection between results and conclusions. Sometimes, awardees revise their draft reports twice or more to address all of the reviewers’ comments.
Peer reviewers commented and the researchers made changes or provided responses. Those comments and responses included the following:
- The reviewers asked for more examples of the interventions conducted in the palliative care arm of the study. The researchers included an appendix that detailed the clinical care checklists that the intervention team used. The researchers also added a reference to an article about the clinical model.
- The reviewers requested more information about the secondary outcomes, which were previously only listed by name. The researchers added a line about each scale used, giving examples of items from the scale and how they rated them.
- The reviewers found it interesting that the relative changes in the primary outcome, quality of life (QOL), in the two arms of the study occurred early on and then seemed to remain relatively stable. The researchers commented that they did not know why there was a change in QOL in both groups at the first time point, three months, that then stabilized. They said a larger longitudinal study would be needed to address that question.
- The reviewers recommended adding discussion and context about why participants in the study were generally white and of high socioeconomic status, despite the researchers’ efforts to recruit a broader sample. The researchers said that they did not collect demographic data for people who they deemed ineligible in the initial telephone screening phase of the study, but they believed that the people selected were demographically similar to those screened. So, they believed that lack of referrals or interest in the study, rather than study procedures, was the main barrier to recruiting a more broadly representative group. The researchers noted that in Parkinson’s disease care in general, African Americans are less likely to see a neurologist or a movement disorders specialist, and patients were less likely to hear about the study if they did not see such specialists. The researchers also added information to the report regarding their efforts to recruit participants from rural and inner-city populations, which were not very successful. They acknowledged that future studies would need to target these disadvantaged and minority populations to improve the diversity of the participant pool.
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