Quality indicators in the treatment of geriatric hip fractures: literature review and expert consensus.

purposeEven though hip fracture care pathways have evolved, mortality rates have not improved during the last 20 years. This finding together with the increased frailty of hip fracture patients turned hip fractures into a major public health concern. The corresponding development of an indicator labyrinth for hip fractures and the ongoing practice variance in Europe call for a list of benchmarking indicators that allow for quality improvement initiatives for the rapid recovery of fragile hip fractures (RR-FHF). The purpose of this study was to identify quality indicators that assess the quality of in-hospital care for rapid recovery of fragile hip fracture (RR-FHF).

methodsA literature search and guideline selection was conducted to identify recommendations for RR-FHF. Recommendations were categorized as potential structure, process, and outcome QIs and subdivided in-hospital care treatment topics. A list of structure and process recommendations that belongs to care treatment topics relevant for RR-FHF was used to facilitate extraction of recommendations during a 2-day consensus meeting with experts (n = 15) in hip fracture care across Europe. Participants were instructed to select 5 key recommendations relevant for RR-FHF for each part of the in-hospital care pathway: pre-, intra-, and postoperative care.

resultsIn total, 37 potential QIs for RR-FHF were selected based on a methodology using the combination of high levels of evidence and expert opinion. The set consists of 14 process, 13 structure, and 10 outcome indicators that cover the whole perioperative process of fragile hip fracture care.

conclusionWe suggest the QIs for RR-FHF to be practice tested and adapted to allow for intra-hospital longitudinal follow-up of the quality of care and for inter-hospital and cross-country benchmarking and quality improvement initiatives.