Impact of structural and economic factors on hospitalization costs, inpatient mortality, and treatment type of traumatic hip fractures in Switzerland

• Published in: Archives of osteoporosis 2017-12, Vol.12 (1), p.7-7, Article 7
• Main Authors: Mehra, Tarun, Moos, Rudolf M., Seifert, Burkhardt, Bopp, Matthias, Senn, Oliver, Simmen, Hans-Peter, Neuhaus, Valentin, Ciritsis, Bernhard
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Subjects: Adult; Aged; Endocrinology; Female; Health Care Costs; Health Facilities, Proprietary; Hip Fractures - economics; Hip Fractures - mortality; Hip Fractures - therapy; Hospitalization - economics; Hospitalization - statistics & numerical data; Humans; Inpatients - statistics & numerical data; Logistic Models; Male; Medicine; Medicine & Public Health; Middle Aged; Original Article; Orthopedics; Quality Improvement; Switzerland - epidemiology
• ISSN: 1862-3522; 1862-3514
• DOI: 10.1007/s11657-016-0302-3

Summary The assessment of structural and potentially economic factors determining cost, treatment type, and inpatient mortality of traumatic hip fractures are important health policy issues. We showed that insurance status and treatment in university hospitals were significantly associated with treatment type (i.e., primary hip replacement), cost, and lower inpatient mortality respectively. Introduction The purpose of this study was to determine the influence of the structural level of hospital care and patient insurance type on treatment, hospitalization cost, and inpatient mortality in cases with traumatic hip fractures in Switzerland. Methods The Swiss national medical statistic 2011–2012 was screened for adults with hip fracture as primary diagnosis. Gender, age, insurance type, year of discharge, hospital infrastructure level, length-of-stay, case weight, reason for discharge, and all coded diagnoses and procedures were extracted. Descriptive statistics and multivariate logistic regression with treatment by primary hip replacement as well as inpatient mortality as dependent variables were performed. Results We obtained 24,678 inpatient case records from the medical statistic. Hospitalization costs were calculated from a second dataset, the Swiss national cost statistic (7528 cases with hip fractures, discharged in 2012). Average inpatient costs per case were the highest for discharges from university hospitals (US$21,471, SD US$17,015) and the lowest in basic coverage hospitals (US$18,291, SD US$12,635). Controlling for other variables, higher costs for hip fracture treatment at university hospitals were significant in multivariate regression ( p