Impact of multimorbidity on healthcare professional task shifting potential in patients with type 2 diabetes in primary care: a French cross-sectional study

Objectives To estimate the transferability of processes of care from general practitioners (GPs) to allied healthcare professionals and the determinants of such transferability. Design French national cross-sectional multicentre study Setting 128 family practices providing supervised training for residents in general practice. Participants All patients consulting with their GP over a total number of 20 days (ie, 1 day a week from December 2011 to April 2012). Encounters where type 2 diabetes was one of the managed health problems were selected for analysis. Primary and secondary outcome measures Processes that were associated with specific health problems were collected by 54 residents. Potential process transferability was the main outcome assessed, as well as the professionals involved in the collaboration and the eventual conditions associated with transfer. Results From 8572 processes of care that concerned 1088 encounters of patients with diabetes, 21.9% (95% CI 21.1% to 22.8%) were considered eligible for transfer from GPs to allied healthcare professionals (78.1% to nurses, 36.7% to pharmacists). Processes were transferable with condition(s) for 70.6% (ie, a protocol, shared record or supervision). The most transferable processes concerned health maintenance (32.1%) and cardiovascular risk factors (hypertension (28.7%), dyslipidaemia (25.3%) and diabetes (24.3%)). Multivariate analysis showed that educational processes or a long-term condition status were associated with increased transferability (OR 3.26 and 1.47, respectively), whereas patients with higher intellectual occupations or those with two or more associated health problems were associated with lower transferability (OR 0.33 and 0.81, respectively). Conclusions A significant part of GP activity relating to patients with multimorbidity including type 2 diabetes could be transferred to allied healthcare professionals, mainly on prevention and global education to cardiovascular risk factors. The organisational and finance conditions of team work as views of patients and healthcare professionals must be explored before implementation in primary care.