Using the national database to improve hip fracture care (NHFD)
The Falls and Fragility Fractures Audit Programme (FFFAP) has published A broken hip – three steps to recovery, a report on using the National Hip Fracture Database (NHFD) to understand and improve hip fracture care. Every year, over 70,000 people in England, Wales and Northern Ireland will fall and sustain a hip fracture. This report provides a simple guide to the data and resources available by describing the care that hip fracture patients should receive on their journey to recovery.
Key findings include:
- More people than last year (2022) get to an appropriate ward and receive the care of a team with an orthogeriatrician, though these figures are still poorer than pre-COVID
- As in past years, four out of five patients get out of bed by the day after surgery, though the number shown to be free of delirium has improved to nearly two thirds
- More people than ever are returning home and successfully being supported to continue with osteoporosis treatment to prevent future fractures.
It also contains five recommendations to improve care:
- NHS England and the Welsh Government should use NHFD data to monitor hospitals’ delivery of three key stages of care to ensure that:
1) Hospitals are ready for the people they know will present each day
2) Hospitals provide both prompt surgery and optimal peri-operative care
3) Rehabilitation and recovery is planned and started early, and continues beyond the hospital.
- NHS England and the Welsh Government need to address wider inequalities and inequities in patient care by:
4) Agreeing a standardised approach to the collection of ethnicity data across all patients’ pathways and provider organisations
5) Ensuring that people with other injuries benefit from the improvements that have been pioneered among those with hip fracture.
Read the full report: You can view the report by clicking the button below.
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