Objective: To provide a multi-national perspective of people with Parkinson disease (PwPD) on access to healthcare and the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on those perspectives.

Background: PwPD may develop different healthcare needs during their illness. The COVID-19 pandemic brought additional challenges to access to care. To date, research on how PwPD perceive their health care is largely lacking. It is also unclear how COVID-19 pandemic impacted these perceptions.

Method: We conducted an online survey for PwPD in Canada, Germany, Portugal, Spain, and the Czech Republic advertised through national patient associations in the third and fourth quarter of 2021. Results are presented descriptively and univariate associations were tested using Chi Square. A p-value <0.05 was deemed statistically significant.

Results: In total, there were 1,104 respondents. Overall, 701 participants reported some sort of difficulty in access to PD care before the COVID-19 pandemic (63,5%). Overall, there were no significant change in those perceptions as a result of the pandemic. Before the COVID-19 pandemic, greater perceived difficulties in access to PD care was associated with lesser satisfaction with overall PD care (OR: 2.88, 95% CI: 2.22-3.75), postponing a treatment because of costs (OR: 4.22, 95%CI:2.9 – 6.1), and being a female (OR:1.42 95% CI:1:06 -1.89).

Conclusion: COVID-19 pandemic appears to have had a smaller than expected impact on perceptions of health care in PwPDs. There are individual factors that are significantly associated perception of access to PD care in Canada and Europe. When planning new care delivery strategies, it is important to consider these factors in order to identify groups at risk for increased difficulty in accessing care.

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MDS Abstracts - https://www.mdsabstracts.org/abstract/an-european-canadian-multinational-evaluation-of-access-to-care-in-parkinson-disease-a-patient-perspective/