Multimorbidity Questionnaire in Secondary Care (the MMQ study)
Research type
Research Study
Full title
MultiMorbidity and self-reported treatment burden Questionnaire: information from secondary care in a cardio-renal-metabolic, COVID-19 setting (The MMQ Study)
IRAS ID
281014
Contact name
Mary Elizabeth Harrison
Contact email
Sponsor organisation
University Hospitals of Leicester NHS Trust
Duration of Study in the UK
5 years, 1 months, 0 days
Research summary
The study is a cross-sectional, self-reported participant questionnaire with retrospective data linkage verification.
The coronavirus global pandemic has illustrated the importance of understanding multimorbidity. The proportion of patients admitted in China with a severe COVID-19 infection with multimorbidity was 72% (Wang et al, 2020).
The World Health Organization (WHO) defines multimorbidity as the co-existence of two or more chronic conditions in the same individual (WHO, 2016).
Mulitmorbidity is now considered the norm in high-income countries (AMS, 2018). In 2006-7, one-in-ten emergency admissions had 5 or more morbidities; in 2015-16, it had increased to one-in-three (Steventon et al, 2018)Disease clusters link concordant conditions together, such as type 2 diabetes, CVD and CKD. These conditions have common etiologies and treatment plans, enabling healthcare workers to simultaneously target multimorbidities.
The COVID-19 pandemic has shown poorer outcome in those with cardiovascular disease clusters (ESC, 2020).COVID-19 infection susceptibility and adverse outcomes also seem to be linked with ethnicity (Khunti et al, 2020). One third of patients admitted to ICU in the UK due to COVID-19 infection were from an ethnic minority background (Khunti et al, 2020).
Multimorbidity is key to understanding mortality and the emerging long-term morbidity sequelae of the coronavirus. The pandemic has, and continues to, impact the care of people living with multimorbidities, the use of services and the long-term models of care need to be understood.
The primary objective for the research is self-reported treatment burden, with secondary objectives around the factors associated with multimorbidity, such as the coronavirus, frailty and polypharmacy, ethnicity, depravation and NHS utilitsation.
The team will approach patients’ using secondary care facilities, over the age of 18, who can read English.
REC name
East Midlands - Nottingham 1 Research Ethics Committee
REC reference
20/EM/0271
Date of REC Opinion
27 Nov 2020
REC opinion
Favourable Opinion