The Parkinson’s Foundation published a new article in the December issue of The Joint Commission Journal on Quality and Patient Safety titled “Advancing Parkinson’s Care and Patient Safety Through CMS’s Age-Friendly Hospital Measure.” The article provides a practical pathway to operationalize the CMS’s Age-Friendly Hospital Measure, translating a nationally recognized, widely adopted framework for older adults into disease-specific action that reduces preventable harm for a high-risk population—those living with Parkinson’s disease (PD).
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“As the CMS Age-Friendly Hospital Measure takes hold and our population continues to age, hospitals and health systems are embracing the Age-Friendly movement to deliver safer and better care for older adults,” said Sneha Mantri, MS, MD, FAA, Chief Medical Officer for the Parkinson’s Foundation. “The Parkinson’s Foundation seeks to harness this momentum to ensure people with PD receive the best care possible.”
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PD is the second-most common neurodegenerative disease in the United States, and its prevalence is rising in step with an expanding population of older adults. Even among older adults, people with PD face disproportionate risk of preventable harm in the hospital, including deterioration of motor symptoms, increased length of stay, delirium, and mortality due to aspiration pneumonia and readmission.
CMS’s Age-Friendly Hospital Measure, which went into effect January 1, requires hospitals participating in Medicare’s Hospital Inpatient Quality Reporting Program to attest to having processes that comply with the 4Ms Framework for Age-Friendly Care. Non-compliance risks a 29% reduction of a hospital’s Medicare payment update. Simultaneously, the new measure offers hospital systems an opportunity to establish or support Age-Friendly programs and invest in the quality improvement infrastructure required to enable them.
“The 4Ms define what great care looks like for older adults. The Parkinson’s Foundation Hospital Care Recommendations show clinicians how to deliver them reliably for people with PD in real hospital workflows,” said Peter Pronovost, MD, PhD, FCCM, lead author and Chief Quality and Transformation Officer at University Hospitals Cleveland Medical Center. “Hospitals are seeking disease-specific playbooks to better protect and meet the complex needs of older adults. This paper offers one for PD.”
The article summarizes tactical recommendations for ensuring Age-Friendly processes protect PD patients across each of the new hospital measure’s attestation domains, including:
- Eliciting Patient Healthcare Goals (What Matters to PD Patients)
- Responsible Medication Management
- Frailty Screening and Intervention
- Social Vulnerability
- Age-Friendly Care Leadership
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