KONURALP TIP DERGISI, cilt.13, sa.3, ss.563-569, 2021 (ESCI)
Objective: Coordination function of primary care (PC) enables continuous, efficient, and costeffective health care provided to patients with chronic disease and multimorbidity (MM). The
aim of this study was to identify the most common chronic diseases and to determine the
prevalence of MM in PC registries.
Methods: Our study is a cross-sectional study. All the individuals aged 40 and over who were
registered to the primary care units (PCUs) of the Uskudar district of Istanbul have formed the
population of the study. A systematic cluster sampling was used. The patient list of each family
physician in Uskudar district was accepted as a cluster and an equal number of patients from
each cluster were enrolled. Only the information on the patients’ MM data was requested from
the primary care physicians.
Results: The 108 physicians of the Uskudar district (response rate: 73.4%) gave consent to
participate in the study. The 1187 (40.3%) of registered patients of all PCUs were 40 years old
and over. The multimorbid patients were found as 330 (27.8%).
Conclusions: Approximately, one of four patients have multimorbidity. So, the policy of
primary care services should be redesigned for the management of MM patients including the
‘goal-oriented care’ approach.