TY  - JOUR
A1  - Schäfer, Ingmar
A1  - Hansen, Heike
A1  - Schön, Gerhard
A1  - Maier, Wolfgang
A1  - Höfels, Susanne
A1  - Altiner, Attila
A1  - Fuchs, Angela
A1  - Gerlach, Ferdinand M.
A1  - Petersen, Juliana
A1  - Gensichen, Jochen
A1  - Schulz, Sven
A1  - Riedel-Heller, Steffi Gerlinde
A1  - Luppa, Melanie
A1  - Weyerer, Siegfried
A1  - Werle, Jochen
A1  - Bickel, Horst
A1  - Barth, Kerstin
A1  - König, Hans-Helmut
A1  - Rudolph, Anja
A1  - Wiese, Birgitt
A1  - Prokein, Jana
A1  - Bullinger, Monika
A1  - Knesebeck, Olaf von dem
A1  - Eisele, Marion
A1  - Kaduszkiewicz, Hanna
A1  - Wegscheider, Karl
A1  - Bussche, Hendrik van den
T1  - The German MultiCare-study : patterns of multimorbidity in primary health care - protocol of a prospective cohort study
T2  - BMC health services research
N2  - Background Multimorbidity is a highly frequent condition in older people, but well designed longitudinal studies on the impact of multimorbidity on patients and the health care system have been remarkably scarce in numbers until today. Little is known about the long term impact of multimorbidity on the patients' life expectancy, functional status and quality of life as well as health care utilization over time. As a consequence, there is little help for GPs in adjusting care for these patients, even though studies suggest that adhering to present clinical practice guidelines in the care of patients with multimorbidity may have adverse effects. Methods The study is designed as a multicentre prospective, observational cohort study of 3.050 patients aged 65 to 85 at baseline with at least three different diagnoses out of a list of 29 illnesses and syndromes. The patients will be recruited in approx. 120 to 150 GP surgeries in 8 study centres distributed across Germany. Information about the patients' morbidity will be collected mainly in GP interviews and from chart reviews. Functional status, resources/risk factors, health care utilization and additional morbidity data will be assessed in patient interviews, in which a multitude of well established standardized questionnaires and tests will be performed. Discussion The main aim of the cohort study is to monitor the course of the illness process and to analyse for which reasons medical conditions are stable, deteriorating or only temporarily present. First, clusters of combinations of diseases/disorders (multimorbidity patterns) with a comparable impact (e.g. on quality of life and/or functional status) will be identified. Then the development of these clusters over time will be analysed, especially with regard to prognostic variables and the somatic, psychological and social consequences as well as the utilization of health care resources. The results will allow the development of an instrument for prediction of the deterioration of the illness process and point at possibilities of prevention. The practical consequences of the study results for primary care will be analysed in expert focus groups in order to develop strategies for the inclusion of the aspects of multimorbidity in primary care guidelines.
Y1  - 2009
UR  - http://publikationen.ub.uni-frankfurt.de/frontdoor/index/index/docId/6906
UR  - https://nbn-resolving.org/urn:nbn:de:hebis:30-64387
SN  - 1472-6963
N1  - © Schäfer et al; licensee BioMed Central Ltd. 2009. This article is published under license to BioMed Central Ltd. This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.
VL  - 9
IS  - Art. 145
SP  - 1
EP  - 9
PB  - BioMed Central
CY  - London
ER  -