Multimorbidity and hospital admissions: examining the links and improving outcomes

A key focus for the NIHR Newcastle BRC is understanding how to improve care for people with multimorbidity admitted to hospital; something that is key to improving outcomes both during hospital stay, but also after discharge.

Furthermore, by understanding how to improve care for people with multimorbidity, we can develop ways to keep people with multimorbidity healthier for longer, reducing the chances of them being admitted to hospital.
It is clear that multiple conditions do not occur randomly, but that they occur in clusters.

More work is needed to understand the mechanisms that underpin different clusters of disease so that we can more effectively treat clusters of conditions, but also to understand how people in different clusters of conditions respond differently to treatments and have different trajectories through the healthcare system.

Understanding multimorbidity in healthcare

With the growth in electronic healthcare records, we have a superb opportunity to better understand clustering of conditions in people admitted to hospital, and to trace their journey of care through the hospital system; from before admission to after discharge.

Using routinely collected electronic healthcare data brings its own challenges, with work needed to understand how best to use these data to improve our knowledge on clustering and the care that we provide. To address this challenge we are working with colleagues locally, regionally and nationally to better understand multimorbidity, using routinely collected healthcare data, with a particular focus on patients admitted to hospital.