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Purpose: To examine health care utilization of people with multiple chronic diseases in The Netherlands compared to people with a single chronic disease, and to identify subgroups of multimorbid patients according to health care utilization., Methods: All patients diagnosed with one or more chronic diseases in 2008-2009 (N=54,051) were selected from the nationwide NIVEL Primary Care Database, and data on their GP contacts and medication in 2010 were retrieved. Data on hospital admissions, household size and income were added. Chi-square-tests and multivariate regression analyses were performed to analyze differences between multimorbid patients and patients with a single chronic disease, and between subgroups of multimorbid patients derived from cluster analysis., Results: Multimorbid patients (37% of all patients) had more GP contacts, prescribed medications, and hospital admissions (all p<.0001) than patients with a single chronic disease. The largest cluster of multimorbid patients (57%) had a relatively low level of health care utilization, a smaller cluster (36%) had higher levels of health care utilization, and 7.6% of patients were heavy health care users (p<.0001 for all variables). The latter were older, more often female, had a lower income, lived in a smaller household, had more chronic diseases, and more often had specific chronic diseases such as COPD, diabetes and heart failure., Conclusions: The majority of multimorbid patients have only slightly higher health care utilization than patients with a single chronic disease. Extensive health care utilization among multimorbid patients seems to be related to patient characteristics as well as chronic disease numbers and patterns., (Copyright © 2016 European Federation of Internal Medicine. Published by Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.)

Background: The number of cancer survivors is steadily increasing and these patients often experience long-lasting health problems. To make care for cancer survivors sustainable for the future, it would be relevant to put the effects of cancer in this phase into perspective. Therefore, the authors compared health-related quality of life (HRQOL) and health care use among cancer survivors with that of patients with chronic diseases., Methods: Patients diagnosed at age >18 years with a cancer with a 5-year survival rate > 20% and no distant metastases at the time of diagnosis and patients aged >18 years with physician-diagnosed somatic chronic diseases without cancer were sent a questionnaire. HRQOL was measured with the RAND-36, a measure of HRQOL. Self-reported health care use was measured for general practitioner care, specialist care, rehabilitative care, physical therapy, ambulatory mental health care, and occupational health care., Results: A total of 601 cancer survivors and 1052 patients with chronic diseases without cancer were included in the current study. Multimorbidity was observed in 63% of the cancer survivors and 61% of the patients with chronic diseases. The HRQOL of the cancer survivors was significantly better than that of patients with chronic diseases after adjustment for age and sex. For the mental functioning subscale, no significant differences were found between the 2 groups. Cancer survivors were found to be less likely to have visited a general practitioner or cardiologist compared with patients with chronic diseases., Conclusions: When considering physical HRQOL and health care use, cancer survivors appear to fare better than the average patient with chronic diseases. No difference in mental functioning was observed in the current study., (© 2016 American Cancer Society.)

Purpose: To examine health care utilization of people with multiple chronic diseases in The Netherlands compared to people with one chronic disease, and to identify different subgroups of multimorbid patients based on differences in health care utilization., Methods: All patients diagnosed with one or more chronic diseases in 2008-2009 (N=17,443) were selected from the nationwide NIVEL Primary Care Database, and data on their GP contacts were included. Data on hospital admissions (from the Dutch Hospital Data database) and household size and income (from the Integral Household Incomes database 2010) were added. Chi-square-tests and multivariate regression analyses were performed to test for differences between multimorbid patients and patients with one chronic disease, and between subgroups of multimorbid patients derived from cluster analysis., Results: Multimorbid patients (40% of the total sample) had more GP contacts, prescribed medications, and hospital admissions (all p<.0001) than patients with one chronic disease. The largest cluster of multimorbid patients (80%) was characterized by a relatively low level of health care utilization. Two smaller clusters comprised patients with a (very) high level of health care utilization - these people were mainly older, more often female, had a lower income, a smaller household size, and suffered from more chronic diseases., Conclusions: Among the vast majority of multimorbid patients health care utilization is only slightly higher compared to patients with one chronic disease. Extensive health care utilization among people with multimorbidity seems to be related to patient characteristics as well as illness characteristics., (Copyright © 2015 European Federation of Internal Medicine. Published by Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.)