UK Parkinson's Audit: transforming care
Our UK Parkinson's Audit is the recognised UK-wide audit and quality improvement tool for Parkinson's services.
View the findings of our 2025 Audit, including what's working well and where care and services can improve.
Introducing the 2025 Audit: our largest ever
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A total of 698 services across the UK took part in our 2025 Audit and submitted data on the care provided to 12,620 people with Parkinson’s.
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In addition, 8,863 people shared feedback on the quality of their Parkinson’s service.
The reports and resources on this page provide evidence of good practice and highlight our key themes for improvement. You can explore data further to apply to your own practice or service.
Services who took part in the Audit can access their Individual Service Reports and register their local improvement projects.
The Individual Service Reports allow services to see what they’re doing well, and the areas they need to improve in. We use them to build a national picture of the current quality of care for people with Parkinson’s.
Details of a national priority improvement programme will be added here soon.
2025 Audit reports
“Transforming care: report of the 2025 UK Parkinson’s Audit” sets out the main findings of the latest audit, highlighting what’s working well and where care and services can improve.
A short overview of the UK Parkinson’s Audit 2025, bringing together the headline findings and key messages from the full report.
Detailed data tables from the UK Parkinson’s Audit 2025, providing additional breakdowns to support the findings in the Audit report.
A table listing the services that took part in the UK Parkinson’s Audit 2025 across the UK.
Summary for non-professionals
An overview of the UK Parkinson’s Audit 2025, suitable for sharing with a non-professional audience.
Evidence of good practice
The 2025 Audit shows that services are improving, with many areas of good practice evident across individual specialties.
Notable improvements include:
- patient satisfaction feedback about their services
- access to specialist Parkinson's nurses
- increased use of evidence based practice in physiotherapy, occupational therapy, and speech and language therapy services.
Key themes for improvement
The Audit has identified 5 improvement themes across participating services.
We'll be using these improvement themes to develop and facilitate a national priority improvement programme (for those who sign up to it) to address gaps identified.
The improvement themes are outlined below and include links to useful resources and learning to support your development in these areas.
Parkinson’s medication is time critical. Delays can cause significant deterioration in symptoms and lead to increased care needs and longer hospital stays.
Historically, the Audit has highlighted persistent issues with hospital-based medication management for people with Parkinson’s. This led us to develop a new inpatient pharmacy audit to better understand where issues occur. This data will allow us to benchmark future Audit findings and share examples of good practice..
As the latest Audit shows, only 12.4% of people admitted to hospital always got their Parkinson's medication on time, every time. Of those who didn't, 38.9% said this had a negative or significantly negative effect.
View inpatient care and medicines management resources.
View inpatient care and medicines management learning opportunities.
Parkinson's is a complex and chronic condition. People with Parkinson's should receive the best care in specialist Parkinson's or movement disorder clinics and have access to multidisciplinary teams.
Statement 3 of the NICE Parkinson's Disease quality standard recommends referral to physiotherapy, occupational therapy or speech and language therapy when people experience difficulties with balance, motor function, activities of daily living, communication, swallowing or saliva.
The Audit shows that over 95% of elderly care and neurology services have access to these therapies, but earlier referral needs to be encouraged.
The Optimal clinical pathway for adults with movement disorders (NNAG) recommends access to regional specialist teams to assess suitability for advanced therapies and support discussion of complex cases.
Currently, 68.5% of elderly care and neurology services have access to a regional meeting.
View specialised multidisciplinary working resources.
View specialised multidisciplinary working learning opportunities.
Written information about Parkinson's is not routinely available in over 7% of outpatient clinics. Even where it is provided, only 60% of people feel they are given enough information at diagnosis.
Only a third of newly diagnosed patients are documented to have been given written information about their condition.
View communication and information sharing resources.
View communication and information sharing learning opportunities.
Standardised practices are essential for optimising Parkinson’s management. They help ensure care is evidence-based, measurable and consistent.
These practices should be embedded within the clinical infrastructure of Parkinson’s services. For inpatient care, standard operating procedures (SOPs) are particularly important for patient safety, including the administration of time-critical medication.
View standardised practices resources.
View standardised practices learning opportunities.
To enable good quality care to be delivered, the health workforce should be well informed and supported.
The 2025 Audit highlights induction and ongoing support for all new therapists working with people with Parkinson’s as a key area for improvement. Clinicians and Parkinson's nurses should be encouraged to complete Parkinson's-specific Continuing Medical Education (CME).
Health professionals should be supported to access Parkinson’s learning throughout their careers.
Our Learning Hub provides access to a range of courses for all disciplines, and signposts to external learning opportunities.
Participating services: Individual Service Reports and more
Log in to the Audit tool through our Audit and Service Improvement portal to sign up for the national service improvement project when it launches and to record your local improvement projects.
You can also access your Individual Service Report (ISR) via the portal, which lets you benchmark your service’s data against national results for your specialty.
Your ISR allows you to:
- see how your service compares with UK-wide results for your specialty
- plan a service improvement project, with support from our Service Improvement team
- track progress since the 2022 Audit, if you took part then.
Audit participation map
We introduced this feature for the 2025 Audit to show the specialty and location of registered services. The colour of each marker indicates services that submitted complete data, including the service Audit and the minimum required number of patient cases.
Our participating services table shows you the services that took part in the UK Parkinson’s Audit 2025 across the UK.
More about our Audit
Our UK Parkinson's Audit is the only recognised UK-wide audit of Parkinson's services.
The Healthcare Quality Improvement Partnership (HQIP) lists our Audit in their Quality Accounts during years when data is collected. You can find more information on HQIP’s Quality Accounts page.
The Audit is a quality improvement process designed to support consistent, safe and evidence-based care aligned with clinical guidelines. It provides timely, reliable benchmarking data and helps drive improvements in outpatient and inpatient care by identifying gaps and promoting best practice.
"The Audit really made me think about our patients, carers and what we are doing and very importantly what and how to do better. You get an accurate picture of how your service is doing; we learned a lot about our service - things we hadn’t thought about. It helps to focus on what is being done, how good it is, what the gaps are and how to improve for everyone."
Simon Cooper, Consultant Geriatrician, Clinical Lead for Parkinson’s Disease, Somerset NHS Foundation Trust
Service eligibility and guidance documents
Elderly care, neurology, physiotherapy, occupational therapy, speech and language therapy and in-patient pharmacy services took part in the 2025 Audit.
This section outlines eligibility requirements and includes the documents that supported services through the Audit process.
Eligibility criteria
- Your elderly care or neurology service sees patients with idiopathic Parkinson's who've been referred to you in connection with their Parkinson's.
- At least 20 of these people will be seen during the 5 month data collection and submission period: Thursday 1 May to Tuesday 30 September 2025.
- Your service is responsible for these people's ongoing management, for example, not seen as a tertiary referral for advice.
- Your service, or multidisciplinary group of services taking part, is able to return at least 10 Patient reported experience measure (PREM) questionnaires. This is a short 10 question paper form which allows patients to express their views of their service. The PREM can be completed by any of your patients with Parkinson's, even if they haven't been included in the clinical audit.
Note that in-patients shouldn't be included in the Audit.
Elderly care and neurology service guidance document
You'll find the Audit questions, the standards being audited and the Audit background and methodology in this document.
Download the elderly care and neurology guidance document (PDF, 477KB).
Elderly care and neurology patient audit case sheet
Use this to record your patient cases before entering the data on the online tool.
Download the elderly care and neurology patient audit case sheet (PDF, 171KB).
Definition of a service
An Audit site is a service provided to a geographical area and cohort of patients by a consultant or group of consultants with or without a Parkinson's nurse, or by Parkinson's nurses alone without consultant input, regardless of who commissions the constituent parts.
Consultants and Parkinson's nurses are best placed to decide what constitutes a discrete service.
Clinicians working across more than one discrete service should register separate services. For example, a consultant working with different Parkinson's nurses in different commissioning or geographical areas.
Contact us with any queries at [email protected].
Eligibility criteria
- Your occupational therapy service sees patients with idiopathic Parkinson's who've been referred to you in connection with their Parkinson's.
- At least 10 of these people will be seen during the 5 month data collection and submission period: Thursday 1 May to Tuesday 30 September 2025. This can be for a review appointment, active intervention or as newly referred patients undergoing full assessment.
- Your service, or multidisciplinary group of services taking part, is able to return at least 10 Patient reported experience measure (PREM) questionnaires. This is a short 10 question paper form which allows patients to express their views of their service. The PREM can be completed by any of your patients with Parkinson's, even if they haven't been included in the clinical audit.
Note that in-patients should not be included in the Audit.
Occupational therapy service guidance document
You'll find the Audit questions, the standards being audited and the Audit background and methodology in this document.
Download the occupational therapy guidance document (PDF, 418KB).
Occupational therapy patient audit case sheet
Use this to record your patient cases before entering the data on the online tool.
Download the occupational therapy patient audit case sheet (PDF, 140KB).
Definition of a service
For the purposes of the Audit, a 'service' is that administered from 1 office, regardless of how many different teams and geographical areas feed into their referrals.
Contact us with any queries at [email protected].
Eligibility criteria
- Your physiotherapy service sees patients with idiopathic Parkinson's who've been referred to you in connection with their Parkinson's.
- At least 10 of these people will be seen during the 5 month data collection and submission period: Thursday 1 May to Tuesday 30 September 2025. This can be for a review appointment, active intervention or as newly referred patients undergoing full assessment.
- Your service, or multidisciplinary group of services taking part, is able to return at least 10 Patient reported experience measure (PREM) questionnaires. This is a short 10 question paper form which allows patients to express their views of their service. The PREM can be completed by any of your patients with Parkinson's, even if they haven't been included in the clinical audit.
Note that in-patients should not be included in the Audit.
Physiotherapy service guidance document
You'll find the Audit questions, the standards being audited and the Audit background and methodology in this document.
Download the physiotherapy guidance document (PDF, 381KB).
Physiotherapy patient audit case sheet
Use this to record your patient cases before entering the data on the online tool.
Download the physiotherapy patient audit case sheet (PDF, 128KB).
Definition of a service
For the purposes of the Audit, a 'service' is that administered from 1 office, regardless of how many different teams and geographical areas feed into their referrals.
Contact us with any queries at [email protected].
Eligibility criteria
- Your speech and language therapy service sees patients with idiopathic Parkinson's who've been referred to you in connection with their Parkinson's.
- At least 10 of these people will be seen during the 5 month data collection and submission period: Thursday 1 May to Tuesday 30 September 2025. This can be for a review appointment, active intervention or as newly referred patients undergoing full assessment.
- Your service, or multidisciplinary group of services taking part, is able to return at least 10 Patient reported experience measure (PREM) questionnaires. This is a short 10 question paper form which allows patients to express their views of their service. The PREM can be completed by any of your patients with Parkinson's, even if they haven't been included in the clinical audit.
Note that in-patients should not be included in the Audit.
Speech and language therapy service guidance document
You'll find the Audit questions, the standards being audited and the Audit background and methodology in this document.
Download the speech and language therapy guidance document (PDF, 433KB).
Speech and language therapy patient audit case sheet
Use this to record your patient cases before entering the data on the online tool.
Download the speech and language therapy patient audit case sheet (PDF, 147KB).
Definition of a service
For the purposes of the Audit, a 'service' is that administered from 1 office, regardless of how many different teams and geographical areas feed into their referrals.
Contact us with any queries at [email protected].
Eligibility criteria
- Your service manages time critical medication for patients with Parkinson's.
- At least 10 of these people will be seen during the 5 month data collection and submission period: Thursday 1 May to Tuesday 30 September 2025.
In-patient pharmacy service guidance document
You'll find the Audit questions, the standards being audited and the Audit background and methodology in this document.
Download the in-patient pharmacy service guidance document (PDF, 329KB).
In-patient pharmacy audit case sheet
Use this sheet to record your patient cases before entering the data on the online tool.
Download the in-patient pharmacy patient audit case sheet (PDF, 93KB).
Definition of a service
For the purposes of the Audit, a 'service' is that administered from 1 office, regardless of how many different teams and geographical areas feed into their referrals.
Contact us with any queries at [email protected].
Past Audits
Explore the findings from past audit cycles up to 2022.
Get involved in the 2028 Audit
Registration for the 2028 Audit will open in February 2028. Information will be available on this page from late 2027.
You can contact our Audit team at any time at: [email protected].