Thank you very much.
It can start with a slight tremor in the hand, or stiffness, or maybe it becomes difficult to walk. You know there is something wrong, but you're told it's old age or maybe arthritis or maybe it's in your head, which only makes it worse. But sooner or later, the diagnosis is confirmed: you have Parkinson's disease. You, a once vibrant person, are transformed into a full-time patient requiring increasing levels of care from spouse or family members and ultimately long-term care placement as the care needs become too overwhelming for partners and families.
The number of Canadians battling Parkinson's disease is 100,000. It robs each of them, ultimately, of their dignity and of their hope. When they need it the most, our health care system fails them, providing solutions that don't really match the disease and can't help them back to a better life.
But there is another way to dramatically improve the quality of lives of people with Parkinson's disease, while actually saving the health care system money. Honourable members of the health committee, it is this other and more holistic approach that I'm here to tell you about today.
My name is Dr. Galit Kleiner-Fisman. I am a Harvard-trained neurologist who has received further sub-specialized training in Parkinson's disease. I am currently an assistant professor in the Department of Medicine at the University of Toronto and the medical director of the ATC Jeff and Diane Ross Movement Disorders Clinic, a collaboration between the Baycrest Health Sciences and the Assistive Technology Clinic in Toronto.
Those I care for suffer from what are known as neuro-degenerative conditions. They are people who have ongoing and progressive damage to their nervous systems, as happens in Parkinson's. Care of people with Parkinson's disease is my life's work. My goal is to provide the best possible care using existing resources.
Right now, each year one in every 100 Canadians aged 65 to 80 gets a new diagnosis of Parkinson's disease. Over the age of 80, that triples to three new diagnoses for every 100 people every year, and that's in addition to the number of people already living with a condition. About 12% of Canadians aged 80 and over currently live with Parkinson's disease, and as our aging population grows this will double to 25%. So think about that for a moment. If you and your spouse live into your eighties, there is a one-in-two chance that one of you will live and die with Parkinson's disease.
Parkinson's affects every aspect of a person. It affects thinking. It can cause depression or hallucinations and problems with eating, voiding, and bowel function. But these non-movement symptoms are frequently not recognized as part of the disease by either patients or their doctors, and are misdiagnosed or left untreated. Untrained in recognizing or managing the complex and debilitating symptoms of Parkinson's, family doctors are caught between the increasing needs of desperate patients and an over-stressed health care system. All too often and needlessly, patients end up in emergency rooms, where they don't get the care that they need. In Ontario, in fact, people living with Parkinson's are admitted to the hospital 40% more often than people without Parkinson's. When they are admitted, they stay 20% longer than people the same age without Parkinson's. Studies have shown that a person with Parkinson's also has a five times higher risk of being placed in a nursing home, and then costs incurred while in the nursing home are also fivefold more compared to residents without Parkinson's disease.
In 1998 the Parkinson Society of Canada reported that long-term disability of Parkinson's patients cost the health care system $560 million. Now, more than a decade later, costs have ballooned to an estimated $750 million.
It is within our reach right now with current treatments already available to better manage symptoms, reduce unnecessary hospitalizations, and delay nursing home admissions, all while saving the health care system money and vastly improving the lives of patients and their families.
At the centre where I work, the Baycrest-ATC Jeff and Diane Ross Movement Disorders Clinic, that's what we do. In our model, the patients don't revolve around their health care professional, we revolve around them. While this model may be novel in Canada, it's not in other countries. For example, in the United States the veterans' health care system established inter-professional Parkinson's centres 11 years ago, and with great results. I was privileged to be a clinician at one of these facilities, called PADRECCs, or Parkinson’s Disease Research, Education, and Clinical Centers, when I was on faculty at the University of Pennsylvania. I saw first-hand how effective these PADRECCs were in addressing the complex needs of Parkinson's patients.
We'd all like to see medical advances in the form of a cure, but the fundamental question that drives our work at Baycrest and ATC is how do we use the medical and non-medical tools that already exist to improve the quality of life of patients with Parkinson's and other chronic neurological illnesses, all while staying within the current framework of our health care system?
Well, it starts with the philosophy of patient-centred care. In addition to the sub-specialist and a family physician who acts as a liaison with community family physicians, we also provide access to allied health professionals, including physical therapists, occupational therapists, specialized nurses, dieticians, social workers, and pharmacists all under one roof. This is called interprofessional care.
At the end of a patient's visit, everyone debriefs and provides recommendations for ongoing management based on collective input. We treat the whole person. As a result, we're more able to accurately fine-tune medications, deal with side-effects, and better manage the symptoms and issues that could otherwise result in a trip to the hospital. The fact is many Parkinson's patients don't get the instructions they need to follow through to better manage their disease. Our patients do, and so do their doctors.
We believe empowering family doctors to better treat Parkinson's disease is important. There's a great shortage of specialized Parkinson's care providers, even in a major medical centre like Toronto. In our model, GPs and patients themselves become more self-sufficient, freeing up the specialists' time to deliver specialized care to more people.
In Canada the provinces administer health care, but federal leadership needs to create the momentum for an integrated interprofessional approach to the management of Parkinson's and indeed for other neurological diseases.
The basic philosophy for our model of care is based on previous ATC models of care and includes the following: patient needs define services; care is organized around solutions; multi-disciplinary teams provide care; and results need to be measured to accelerate learning.
Building on these four fundamental principles, we believe the time has come to set up interprofessional centres of excellence for neurological care across Canada. Through these centres, patients will learn how to better manage their disease, will be seen more quickly, and be able to employ strategies that will keep them out of hospitals and enjoying a better quality of life, all while saving the health care system money.
We need to ensure access for all Canadians and not just those living in large metropolitan areas where centres usually exist. That will necessitate federal support to set up methods that will allow patients in remote areas of the country virtual access to these centres and the related professionals.
We recommend that each centre of excellence for neurological care should include the following components: adequate physical space for patients to see practitioners and where practitioners from all disciplines can come for training, along with the necessary infrastructure; sufficient funding to cover salaries and operating costs; virtual access via video conference for those in remote areas, along with an electronic patient record for virtual collaboration between medical and related professions; a database to share and collaborate with other centres of excellence so as to encourage clinical research; a website for patient education that is accessible in multiple languages and is sensitive to issues related to knowledge translation in those with disabilities; and a research and development program for entrepreneurial development of innovations, such as communication technologies, seating and mobility devices, and environmental aids for daily living, just to name a few.
We need to encourage collaborative partnerships between the public sector and business community as well as private investment to stimulate the economy.
Successful health care delivery models could also lead to social impact investing where private investors help fund not-for-profit projects and the investors are paid a return that comes from the money that projects save the government. Additionally, we need to encourage private donations through matching federal support.
In conclusion, Dr. William Reichman, the CEO of Baycrest Health Sciences, who testified in front of this committee on November 28, 2011, said that for elderly people to stay living in their own homes rather than being placed in nursing facilities requires deliberate, transformative change. We stand on the verge of a crisis. The needs of an aging population threaten to bankrupt our already strained health care system, but with great crisis comes opportunity. Using what we already have and know, we can make life better for neurological patients and their families, while saving money for the health care system.
Thank you very much, and I look forward to your questions.