Interventions for Patients with Multimorbidity in Primary Care and Community Settings

Authors
Susan Smith
Emma Wallace
Tom O'Dowd
Martin Fortin
Peer-Reviewed Article
March 2016

This resource reviews the evidence on the effectiveness of interventions to improve outcomes for people with multimorbidity in primary care and community settings.

  • The interventions did not yield clear improvements in clinical outcomes, health service use, medication adherence, patient-related health behaviors, health professional behaviors, or costs.
  • Some studies that targeted people with depression found modest improvements in mental health outcomes, and two studies targeting functional difficulties in participants found improvements in functional outcomes.
  • Overall, the results indicate that it is difficult to improve outcomes for people with multiple conditions.
  • Interventions that are designed to target specific risk factors (for example, treatment for depression) or interventions that focus on difficulties that people experience with daily functioning (for example, physiotherapy treatment to improve capacity for physical activity) may hold the most potential.
Posted to The Playbook on
Level of Evidence
Strong
What does this mean?