People with PD, caregivers report high satisfaction with home visits

Individuals with Parkinson’s disease and their caregivers had higher satisfaction with usual care than previously thought, according to findings presented at the American Neurological Association annual meeting.

They also had even more satisfaction with home visits.

“Patient and caregiver satisfaction are increasingly used and recognized as important metrics of patient-centeredness,” Jori Fleisher, MD, MSCE, director of the Lewy Body Dementia Association Research Center of Excellence at Rush University Medical Center in Illinois, said during a virtual presentation. “However, satisfaction with care has only been minimally explored in Parkinson’s disease.”

Fleisher and colleagues used a validated measure of satisfaction with care to compare satisfaction with best usual PD care at baseline and at 1 year of quarterly home visits among those with advanced PD and their caregivers. Further, they aimed to pinpoint predictors of greater satisfaction.

The researchers administered the Client Satisfaction Inventory-Short Form (CSI-SF) to homebound patients with advanced PD (n = 48) and caregiver (n = 47) dyads who participated in a trial of interdisciplinary home visits at the first visit to describe their usual PD care and again after 1 year of home visits. They evaluated differences over time via paired t tests. Secondary analyses included characteristics that predicted a 10-point or higher CSI-SF improvement, as well as associations between race, ethnicity, sex and satisfaction with care.

Results showed improvement in satisfaction from baseline/usual care to 1 year of home visits. Younger age correlated with a 10-point or higher improvement in patient satisfaction, with those who reached this level of improvement aged a mean of 74.8 years and those who did not aged a mean of 80 years. A 10-point or higher improvement in caregiver satisfaction was linked to change in patient’s mobility.

Exploratory analyses showed higher satisfaction with usual care among nonwhite vs. white caregivers and Hispanic/Latino vs. non-Hispanic/Latino caregivers. The researchers reported no differences in 1-year caregiver or 1-year patient satisfaction according to race, ethnicity or sex.

“Novel specific measures that are sensitive to change are necessary to assess satisfaction with care in this population of patients and caregivers,” Fleisher said during the presentation.