Unlock the value of timely medication: Parkinson's UK time critical medication dashboard

What does the time critical medication dashboard do?

The time critical medication dashboard estimates the direct cost for hospitals and the impact on patient outcomes of time critical Parkinson’s medication delays and omissions at national, Integrated Care Board (ICB), NHS Trust and health board levels across England, Scotland, and Wales. The model considers key impacts such as length of stay, staff time, mortality, re-admissions, and the associated costs.

The dashboard helps organisations evaluate different approaches (such as self-administration, staff training, or e-prescribing) to improve the timely administration of time critical medications by modelling the cost savings gained from implementation.

In addition to people with Parkinson’s, medication is time critical for several conditions, including people with diabetes, epilepsy and HIV. As an indicative multiplier, The PSC estimates that the overall costs could be 7 to 8 times higher when people with other health conditions who rely on time critical medication are factored in.

The dashboard has been pivotal in helping health professionals demonstrate the real-world value of time critical medication (TCM) improvements. As a health professional at one NHS Trust explains, it has helped them work through significant challenges in how their improvement work is framed.

"We started our TCM improvement work and quickly realised we were going to have trouble getting our baseline data to support our current position."

This meant they didn’t have a clear baseline to measure against once their quality improvement programme (QIP) was underway. It also made it difficult to show senior staff how the improvement work was affecting the Trust.

They noted that the dashboard allowed them to show, in practical terms, the impact that missed and delayed doses of Parkinson's medications were having on their Trust. This helped them establish a clearer starting point for their improvement work.

"We were able to use this to help us to gain traction and benchmark our starting position," they said, adding that they hope to see a significant improvement in the dashboard as they work on their quality improvement programme.