Photo Credit: Anton Porkin
The following is a summary of “Primary care utilization, adherence to guideline-based pharmacotherapy and continuity of care in primary care patients with chronic diseases and multimorbidity – a cross-sectional study,” published in the November 2023 issue of Primary Care by Maun, et al.
For a study, researchers sought how to improve care for people with multiple chronic diseases. They wanted to describe how common chronic diseases are and how multimorbidity looks. They also wanted to look at the links between the occurrence of diseases and things like using primary care, sticking to drug therapy based on guidelines, and getting the same care over time. The study looked back at regular care data from the general community in the Jonkoping area over 4.3 years. The study includes 345,916 people who used primary care services. Patients who met the requirements had at least one of 10 common chronic diseases and three visits to their primary care doctor between 2011 and 2015. To find out about diseases and multimorbidity, primary care use, commitment to guideline-based drug treatment, rates and percentages, interval and ratio scaled variables were described in the community using means, standard deviations, and different percentiles.
Two measures of continuity (MMCI and COC) were used to show continuity. Of the population, 25,829 cases (7.5% of the population) met the conditions for participation. The number of diseases got worse with age, and having more than one disease was much more common (mean 2.0 per patient). There was a small positive relationship (0.29) between the number of diseases and visits, but visits did not rise at the same rate as the number of illnesses. People made more visits with bodily illnesses and worry and/or sadness. The number of diseases per patient was linked to not following drug treatment rules in a bad way.
There was no link between consistency and using healthcare or following the rules for drug treatment. Patients with more than one illness are common in basic care, and for many long-term illnesses, having more than one illness at the same time is more common than having just one. This can make following drug therapy rules a risky thing to do for older people with multiple illnesses. Existing measures of consistency also showed their flaws. To rate the level of care for general care patients with multiple illnesses, they should look at the whole person and focus on what’s best for them.
Source: bmcprimcare.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/s12875-023-02191-6