Treating an Illness Is One Thing. What About a Patient With Many?

New York Times People with multiple health problems — a condition known as multimorbidity — are largely overlooked both in medical research and in the nation’s clinics and hospitals. The default position is to treat complicated patients as collections of malfunctioning body parts rather than as whole human beings.

“Very often, there is nobody looking at the big picture or recognizing that what is best for the disease may not be best for the patient,” said Dr. Mary E. Tinetti, a geriatrician at the Yale School of Medicine.

And treating one disease in isolation, she added, can make another disease worse. In controlling diabetes, for example, doctors often seek to reduce levels of a blood-sugar marker called hemoglobin A1C. “But we know that for some people with complicated diseases, that’s not always the best move,” Dr. Tinetti said.