An Orthopedic-Hospitalist Comanaged Hip Fracture Service Reduces Inpatient Length of Stay:

Introduction:Hip fractures are common in the elderly patients with an incidence of 320 000 fractures/year in the United States, representing a health-care cost of US$9 to 20 billion. Hip fracture incidence is projected to increase dramatically. Hospitals must modify clinical models to accommodate this growing burden. Comanagement strategies are reported in the literature, but few have addressed orthopedic-hospitalist models. An orthopedic-hospitalist comanagement (OHC) service was established at our hospital to manage hip fracture patients. We sought to determine whether the OHC (1) improves the efficiency of hip fracture management as measured by inpatient length of stay (LOS) and time to surgery (TTS) and (2) whether our results are comparable to those reported in hip fracture comanagement literature.Methods:A comparative retrospective–prospective cohort study of patients older than 60 years with an admitting diagnosis of hip fracture was conducted to compare inpatient LOS and TTS for hip fracture patie...