Burden of Multiple Chronic Conditions among Patients with Urological Cancer

Purpose: We describe age, multiple chronic condition profiles and health system contact in patients with urological cancer.Materials and Methods: Using Geisinger Health System electronic health records we identified adult primary care patients and a subset with at least 1 urology encounter between 2001 and 2015. The Agency for Health Care Research and Quality Chronic Condition Indicator and Clinical Classifications Software tools were applied to ICD-9 codes to identify chronic conditions. Multiple chronic conditions were defined as 2 or more chronic conditions. Patients with urological cancer were identified using ICD-9 codes for prostate, bladder, kidney, testis and penile cancer. Inpatient and outpatient visits in the year prior to the most recent encounter were counted to document health system contact.Results: We identified 357,100 primary care and 33,079 urology patients, of whom 4,023 had urological cancer. Patients with urological cancer were older than primary care patients (71 vs 46 years) and th...