Considering treatment burden in our patients with multimorbidity

In this episode we talk to Dr Simon Fraser who is a GP and associate professor of public health at the School of Primary Care, Population Sciences, and Medical Education at the University of Southampton.Paper: Change in treatment burden among people with multimorbidity: a follow-up surveyhttps://doi.org/10.3399/BJGP.2022.0103The extent to which treatment burden changes over time and which groups of people are likely to experience increases or decreases in treatment burden is not known. This study identified that a third of older adults with multimorbidity experienced an increase in treatment burden category (overall 9% moving to the ‘high’ treatment burden category), and that living more than 10 minutes away from their GP – particularly for those with limited health literacy - was associated with an increase in treatment burden. Improving patient access to primary care services and enhancing health literacy may help to mitigate increases in treatment burden. Our revised single-item measure performed moderately, suggesting a brief measure of treatment burden consisting of more than one item may be required for use in practice.