Assessing the Time to Ward Transfer in Patients Presenting to the Emergency Department with an Acute Hip Fracture: A Closed-loop Audit

Introduction The British Orthopaedic Association and British Geriatric Association Blue Book guidelines for patients presenting acutely with a hip fracture stipulate that the patient should be admitted to an acute orthopedic ward within four hours of presentation to the emergency department (ED). Materials and methods A retrospective review of all patients who presented to the ED with a hip fracture diagnosed on plain film X-Ray over an eight-week period by a single auditor. Time of arrival, time to X-ray, time of blood draw, time to orthopedic referral, time to orthopedic review, and time to arrival at the orthopedic ward were documented. A policy change stipulating that orthopedics on call would prospectively review potential hip fracture patients prior to definitive workup was initiated. The same parameters were re-audited following this intervention over a six-week period. Results Pre-intervention, the mean time to orthopedic review was 83 minutes with a mean time to ward of 417 minutes. Post-intervention, the mean time to orthopedic review was 76 minutes with a mean time to ward of 333 minutes. When orthopedic trainees were on call, the mean time to review was 37.5 minutes with a mean time to ward of 294 minutes. Conclusions While we were able to demonstrate an improvement in orthopedic response times, this did not significantly improve time to ward transfer. This highlights a number of other areas that need to be optimized to improve compliance with best practice guidelines.