reports

The trend of prevalence of multimorbidity and needs of out-patient health care services in rural and urban areas in Klaipeda region

Health Sci 23:173-178. Published in Lithuanian.

The aim of the study: to evaluate multimorbidity dynamics, and needs of out-patient health care services in rural and urban areas in Klaipeda region during years 2009-2011. An observational retrospective study was performed using non-personalized population data from the Klaipeda Territorial Sickness Fund database. The research population included approximately 410 000 patients, enlisted to 44 primary health care institutions in Klaipeda region during the years 2009-2011. Johns Hopkins ACG system was used to group the population into six Resource Utilization Bands (RUB) which range from nonusers (RUB 0) to a very high comorbidity group (RUB 5). The study revealed that during the investigation period (2009-2011) prevalence of multimorbidity (RUB 5) increased from 9.5/1000 to 9.6/1000 patients (statistically insignificant). In year 2009 and 2010 more multimorbid patients were in urban population (p<0.05), but the trend of multimorbidity prevalence in rural and urban populations was statistically insignificant. Patients from urban areas used more specialist (secondary and tertiary health care) services when compared with rural population.