How this fits in

Patients with multimorbidity may experience treatment burden from healthcare demands, but the extent of, and factors associated with, high treatment burden are not well understood. In this survey of older adults with multimorbidity, almost one-fifth reported ‘high’ treatment burden, which was associated not only with a greater number of long-term conditions and more prescribed regular medications, but also with characteristics indicating reduced ‘capacity’ to manage, namely limited health literacy and financial difficulty. GPs have a central role in incorporating these considerations into patient care, to try to ensure that patients are not overburdened. Additionally, existing measures of treatment burden are too time consuming for clinical use. A novel single-item measure of treatment burden was explored here, but performed moderately; further development of such a measure is therefore required.