Just as polypharmacy may be a measure of comorbidity, the number of physicians or providers that the patient sees may indicate the complexity of a patient's condition.
As a patient's conditions gets more complex, then the number of specialists may increase.
Consequences of seeing multiple providers:
(1) the number of medications may increase
(2) information transfer to and communication between multiple providers can be challenging
(3) the amount of duplicate testing may increase, especially if data is not available
(4) the medical record is more likely to be fragmented, especially if providers use different EHR's
(5) the ability to deprescribe may decrease since a provider may feel uncomfortable discontinuing a drug not prescribed by him/her.
(6) the risk of error from lack of complete information increases
(7) the quality of the patient-physician relationship may suffer
(8) the patient may not know who knows what, or may assume that a provider has information that is not available
Polypharmacy may be defined as >= 5 long-term medications. The number of different providers to qualify for polydoctoring needs to be defined.
Additional issues to consider:
(1) The patient has a condition that is undiagnosed (and seeing multiple people to find out).
(2) The patient is seeking a controlled substance.
(3) The patient is a hypochondriac or has somatic complaints.
