A new paper that OBH has contributed to as part of the NHS England Multiple Long-Term Conditions (MLTC/Multimorbidity) Analytical Workstream, ‘Prevalence of Multiple Long-Term Conditions (Multimorbidity) in England: A Whole Population Study of over 60 million people’, has been published in the Journal of the Royal Society of Medicine.
Our study sought to determine the prevalence of multiple long-term conditions (MLTC) (defined as having two or more of 35 long-term conditions) at the whole English population level, stratifying by age, sex, socioeconomic status and ethnicity. The study uses the National ‘Bridges to Health’ Segmentation Dataset, which contains linked data for c.60 million individuals registered with a general practice in England and alive on 31st March 2020.
We found that the overall prevalence of MLTC was 14.8% (8,878,231), varying from 0.9% (125,159) in those aged 0-19 years to 68.2% (1,905,979) in those aged 80 years and over. There were large numbers of combinations of conditions in each age group ranging from 5,936 in those 0-19 years to 205,534 in those aged 80 years and over. The prevalence of each condition in those with MLTC varied between age groups; in individuals aged 0-19 years, asthma, autism and epilepsy were dominant, while in individuals aged 20-49 years, depression and asthma were dominant and in individuals aged 50-59 years, hypertension and depression were dominant. In individuals aged 60-69 years, 70-79 years and 80+ years, cardiometabolic factors and osteoarthritis were dominant.
This study provides useful insight into the burden across the English population to assist health service delivery planning, however the heterogeneity of MLTC presents challenges for delivery optimisation.
Read more here: https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/01410768231206033
Find out more about the underlying dataset used for this work, see here: https://outcomesbasedhealthcare.com/nhse-segmentation-dataset-reference-guide/
