What does this research mean for the field?

While higher overall primary care quality indicator attainment is associated with slightly increased secondary care use, multimorbidity-specific quality indicators are longitudinally associated with reduced elective admissions and outpatient visits, particularly in patients with complex multimorbidity. Novelty: ClaimNovelty.INCREMENTAL. Consensus alignment: ConsensusAlignment.NEUTRAL.

What question did this study set out to answer?

To assess concurrent and lagged associations between primary care quality indicators and both planned and unplanned secondary healthcare utilization among patients with multimorbidity, considering the modifying role of frailty.

September 5, 2026British Journal of General PracticeOpen Access

Primary care quality and secondary healthcare utilisation in patients with multimorbidity: a retrospective cohort study

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Authors

QGQian GaoSichuan University BHBenedict HayhoeImperial College London MCMeryem CicekImperial College London

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Implication

Retrospective cohort study finds higher multimorbidity-specific primary care quality links to fewer future hospital admissions in multimorbid patients, highlighting the value of targeted care.

Key Points

To assess concurrent and lagged associations between primary care quality indicators and both planned and unplanned secondary healthcare utilization among patients with multimorbidity, considering the modifying role of frailty.
Conducted a retrospective cohort study using electronic health records from the Discover research platform in England between April 2022 and March 2024 (N=468,172 patients with multimorbidity).
Applied principal component analysis to synthesize generic and multimorbidity-specific quality indicators (QIs) and evaluated their impact on secondary care use through regression models.
Higher overall QI attainment was generally associated with an increased concurrent likelihood of outpatient visits, emergency admissions, and emergency department visits.
Higher attainment of multimorbidity-specific QIs was longitudinally associated with lower odds of elective hospital admissions over the subsequent 12 months.
In patients with complex multimorbidity (≥3 conditions), multimorbidity-specific QIs were linked to lower odds of elective admissions and outpatient visits, whereas generic QIs correlated with lower odds of outpatient non-attendance.

Cite This Study

Gao et al. (2026) studied this question.

synapsesocial.com/papers/6a9bd3f16b95aff0620eb1f5 https://doi.org/10.3399/bjgp.2026.0161

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Implication

Retrospective cohort study finds higher multimorbidity-specific primary care quality links to fewer future hospital admissions in multimorbid patients, highlighting the value of targeted care.

Primary care quality and secondary healthcare utilisation in patients with multimorbidity: a retrospective cohort study

Discussion

Member takes

Implication

Key Points

Cite This Study

Primary care quality and secondary healthcare utilisation in patients with multimorbidity: a retrospective cohort study

Discussion

Member takes

Implication

Key Points

Cite This Study

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