Multimorbidity is increasingly straining healthcare – forecasts up to 2040

Background Aging of the population increases multimorbidity, which is strongly associated with increased use of health services and medication. We evaluated the development of the prevalence of multimorbidity in Finland between 2000–2040.

Methods Information from the Care Register for Health Care was combined with health examination survey data representing the population 20 years of age or older from 2000, 2011, 2017 and 2022. The prevalence of multimorbidity derived from the diagnosis data was forecast in 2030 and 2040 using a method based on multiple imputation. The forecasts were estimated for the whole country and by the wellbeing services counties.

Results In women, the prevalence of multimorbidity increased from 11.3% to 19.9% and in men, from 9.4% to 18.2% from 2000 to 2022. The prevalence is forecast to increase to 28.7% in women and to 26.2% in men by 2040. There were notable differences between the wellbeing services counties in both the prevalence and in the forecast increase.

Conclusions The forecast increase in multimorbidity will also results in an increase in costs of healthcare if the healthcare contacts related to multimorbidity will remain similar as before and the effectiveness of the treatment of chronic diseases cannot be significantly improved.

Jaakko Reinikainen, Seppo Koskinen, Zhi Zhou, Tiina Laatikainen