Deakin University
Browse

Multimorbidity, clinical decision making and health care delivery in New Zealand Primary care: a qualitative study

Download (469.99 kB)
Version 3 2024-06-18, 16:35
Version 2 2024-06-06, 11:00
Version 1 2019-09-05, 08:31
journal contribution
posted on 2024-06-18, 16:35 authored by T Stokes, E Tumilty, F Doolan-Noble, R Gauld
© 2017 The Author(s). Background: Multimorbidity is a major issue for primary care. We aimed to explore primary care professionals’ accounts of managing multimorbidity and its impact on clinical decision making and regional health care delivery. Methods: Qualitative interviews with 12 General Practitioners and 4 Primary Care Nurses in New Zealand’s Otago region. Thematic analysis was conducted using the constant comparative method. Results: Primary care professionals encountered challenges in providing care to patients with multimorbidity with respect to both clinical decision making and health care delivery. Clinical decision making occurred in time-limited consultations where the challenges of complexity and inadequacy of single disease guidelines were managed through the use of “satisficing” (care deemed satisfactory and sufficient for a given patient) and sequential consultations utilising relational continuity of care. The New Zealand primary care co-payment funding model was seen as a barrier to the delivery of care as it discourages sequential consultations, a problem only partially addressed through the use of the additional capitation based funding stream of Care Plus. Fragmentation of care also occurred within general practice and across the primary/secondary care interface. Conclusions: These findings highlight specific New Zealand barriers to the delivery of primary care to patients living with multimorbidity. There is a need to develop, implement and nationally evaluate a revised version of Care Plus that takes account of these barriers.

History

Journal

BMC Family Practice

Volume

18

Article number

ARTN 51

Location

England

Open access

  • Yes

ISSN

1471-2296

eISSN

1471-2296

Language

English

Publication classification

C1 Refereed article in a scholarly journal

Copyright notice

2017, The Authors

Issue

1

Publisher

BMC