How Should Health Policy Respond To The Growing Challenge Of Multimorbidity?

There is growing awareness internationally of the increasing number of people living with multiple long-term health conditions, known as multimorbidity. Health services, including the NHS, need to adapt to address this challenge. This policy report discusses the issue of multimorbidity, and offers a summary of recommendations. read King's Fund blog here

Musculoskeletal conditions and multimorbidities report

The purpose of this report from Arthritis Research UK is to explore why and how musculoskeletal health should be considered as part of multimorbidity. It examines why the presence of musculoskeletal disease such as osteoarthritis or back pain can have an overall impact on the health, wellbeing and independence of a person living with multimorbidity. The report highlights the extent of the challenge ahead.

Multimorbidity Quality Standard

This quality standard covers clinical assessment, prioritising and managing healthcare for adults aged 18 years and over with 2 or more long-term health conditions (multimorbidity). At least 1 of these conditions must be a physical health condition. It describes high-quality care in priority areas for improvement.

Multimorbidity and polypharmacy

New NICE key therapeutic topic on mulitmorbidity and polypharmacy.

Multimorbidity – the biggest clinical challenge facing the NHS?

In this joint blog, Dawn Moody and David Bramley argue multimorbidity is becoming the norm. They take a look at the adverse impact this can have upon individual quality of life and examine its association with higher mortality, adverse drug events and greater use unplanned care.

The recent publication of the NICE guideline on multimorbidity offers clear direction in this complex area. It uses a tailored approach to put people at the heart of decisions about their care and helps professionals and commissioners to offer their best advice and support.  Here are six practical top tips to help make the most of the guideline in clinical practice:

Multimorbidity: clinical assessment and management

This guideline from NICE covers optimising care for adults with multimorbidity (multiple long-term conditions) by reducing treatment burden (polypharmacy and multiple appointments) and unplanned care. It aims to improve quality of life by promoting shared decisions based on what is important to each person in terms of treatments, health priorities, lifestyle and goals. The guideline sets out which people are most likely to benefit from an approach to care that takes account of multimorbidity, how they can be identified and what the care involves.