Increased orthogeriatrician involvement in hip fracture care and its impact on mortality in England.

Objectives: to describe the increase in orthogeriatrician involvement in hip fracture care in England and its association with improvements in time to surgery and mortality. Study design: analysis of Hospital Episode Statistics for 196,401 patients presenting with hip fracture to 150 hospitals in England between 1 April 2010 and 28 February 2014, combined with data on orthogeriatrician hours from a national organisational survey. Methods: we examined changes in the average number of hours worked by orthogeriatricians in orthopaedic departments per patient with hip fracture, and their potential effect on mortality within 30 days of presentation. The role of prompt surgery (on day of or day after presentation) was explored as a potential confounding factor. Associations were assessed using conditional Poisson regression models with adjustment for patients' sex, age and comorbidity and year, with hospitals treated as fixed effects. Results: between 2010 and 2013, there was an increase of 2.5 hours per patient in the median number of hours worked by orthogeriatricians-from 1.5 to 4.0 hours. An increase of 2.5 hours per patient was associated with a relative reduction in mortality of 3.4% (95% confidence interval 0.9% to 5.9%, P = 0.01). This corresponds to an absolute reduction of approximately 0.3%. Higher numbers of orthogeriatrician hours were associated with higher rates of prompt surgery, but were independently associated with lower mortality. Conclusion: in the context of initiatives to improve hip fracture care, we identified statistically significant and robust associations between increased orthogeriatrician hours per patient and reduced 30-day mortality.

The impact of a national clinician-led audit initiative on care and mortality after hip fracture in England: an external evaluation using time trends in non-audit data.

BACKGROUND: Hip fracture is the most common serious injury of older people. The UK National Hip Fracture Database (NHFD) was launched in 2007 as a national collaborative, clinician-led audit initiative to improve the quality of hip fracture care, but has not yet been externally evaluated. METHODS: We used routinely collected data on 471,590 older people (aged 60 years and older) admitted with a hip fracture to National Health Service (NHS) hospitals in England between 2003 and 2011. The main variables of interest were the use of early surgery (on day of admission, or day after) and mortality at 30 days from admission. We compared time trends in the periods 2003-2007 and 2007-2011 (before and after the launch of the NHFD), using Poisson regression models to adjust for demographic changes. FINDINGS: The number of hospitals participating in the NHFD increased from 11 in 2007 to 175 in 2011. From 2007 to 2011, the rate of early surgery increased from 54.5% to 71.3%, whereas the rate had remained stable over the period 2003-2007. Thirty-day mortality fell from 10.9% to 8.5%, compared with a small reduction from 11.5% to 10.9% previously. The annual relative reduction in adjusted 30-day mortality was 1.8% per year in the period 2003-2007, compared with 7.6% per year over 2007-2011 (P<0.001 for the difference). INTERPRETATION: The launch of a national clinician-led audit initiative was associated with substantial improvements in care and survival of older people with hip fracture in England.