To characterize the landscape of province-wide hospital admissions in persons with Parkinson’s disease (PD) and inform future healthcare improvement in this population.

Persons with PD tend to have longer hospital stays and are more likely to suffer from adverse events. The province of Alberta, Canada has a single healthcare provider (Alberta Health Services), permitting collection of population-level data from all healthcare facilities. 

We performed a population-based, retrospective cohort study using discharge abstract data for all persons admitted to hospital from 2011 through 2021, in Alberta. We extracted data from the Discharge Abstract Database (DAD), which contains ICD-10-CA coded diagnoses for all patients discharged from hospital. Hospitalizations with PD as both main and pre-admission comorbid diagnoses were identified using the ICD-10-CA G20 (PD) and F02.3 (Dementia in PD) codes.

A total of 17168 hospitalizations were identified during the study period. Mean age was 78 (SD 9 years), and 39% (6761) were female. Median length of hospital stay was 12 days (interquartile range 27). For most patients, the attending service was family practice/general practice (67%, 11496), followed by internal medicine (16%, 2763), orthopedics (6%, 959), psychiatry (3%, 504), and neurology (3%, 497). In-hospital adverse events occurred in 11% (1857) of admissions; 1% (122) were life-threatening. The outcome in 54% (9289) of admissions was discharge home, 24% (4099) long-term care, and 13% (2244) to rehab or other acute care facility. In-hospital mortality was 7% (1225).

Our study describes the landscape of PD hospitalization in a Canadian context. The main admitting specialties are family practice and internal medicine, and over half of patients are discharged home. Future directions include further analysis of this data to understand predictors for adverse outcomes and guide care delivery improvement.