Similar uncertainties about illness, care, and the future are experienced by older people with multiple advanced chronic illnesses (multimorbidity) and by their carers and healthcare professionals, according to new research from the Primary Care Unit at the University of Cambridge. The research holds promise for supporting the holistic care of those with advanced multimorbidity. Uncertainty […]
Telephone triage in primary care does not disadvantage patients with multimorbidity
New research on telephone triage in primary care finds that it does not disadvantage patients with multimorbidity in terms of access to care, compared with other patients in the same GP practice. The research is from Dr Katie Saunders and the Birmingham, RAND and Cambridge Rapid Evaluation Centre (BRACE). Patients who are living with more […]
Understanding multimorbidity to improve patient care
One of the greatest challenges for healthcare is multimorbidity: the presence in one person of multiple long-term diseases. At least a quarter of the UK population have more than one long-term disease, and those that do are more frequent users of NHS services. The specific diseases an individual has affects how they interact with the […]
New way to measure multiple health conditions may help healthcare services respond to the needs of patients
The Cambridge Multimorbidity Score is a new method for measuring multiple long-term health conditions amongst primary care patients, intended to help healthcare planners trying to respond to the needs of patients with multiple health conditions, or multimorbidity. It outperforms the most commonly used current measure, called the Charlson index. Numbers of patients with multimorbidity are […]
Multimorbidity and mental health services – a combined challenge?
Blog by Dr Duncan Edwards, NIHR Doctoral Research Fellow and GP Much is made of the need to adapt health services for patients with multimorbidity, and much is made of the need to improve struggling mental health services. They’re often presented as separate challenges. News stories can conjure up images of older patients with multiple […]
Over half of GP consultations are now with patients with multimorbidity, according to new study of patient data
Over 14 million people in England have multiple long-term health problems and over a third of those have a mental health condition, according to a new analysis of data from over 400,000 patients in England. More than half of GP consultations are now with patients with multimorbidity, say researchers in the new study, published today in […]