Introduction:

Managing information related to multimorbidity in hospital care is crucial for planning strategies to prevent health problems in high-risk patients in order to enable healthcare systems to be organized more efficiently.

Objective:

To describe the formal healthcare network path for patients with and without multimorbidity in relation to the use of public healthcare networks after discharge.

Materials and Methods:

A quantitative descriptive cross-sectional study was conducted with primary data from 445 patients admitted to a university hospital in 2018. Data were collected through analysis of medical records and telephone interviews. Results were analyzed by absolute and relative frequency.

Results:

A flowchart was developed representing the healthcare network locations used by the patient after hospital discharge based on morbidity. It was possible to confirm the existence of a high prevalence of referral (with multimorbidity (WM): 93.52%, without multimorbidity (WOM): 97.71%) and secondary care attendance, low prevalence of referral (WM: 42.45%, WOM: 36.27%) and primary care attendance (WM: 61.29%, WOM: 64.81%). When putting the three levels of healthcare together, low attendance (WM: 17.98% WOM: 21.89%) was observed in both groups under study.

Discussion:

Similar attendance at all healthcare network locations is problematic as these are unequal populations and thus, with different needs

Conclusions:

It is important to encourage follow-up of patients with multimorbidity in the primary care network, especially in the period after hospital discharge and strengthen the healthcare network.

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