Regional Variation in Time to Surgery for Hip Fracture Patients in Canada

Abstract

Variation in time to hip fracture surgery has been observed across provinces. This variation may represent inequity in access to care and an underuse of early surgery. Differences between provinces in patient and system characteristics may contribute to provincial variation in time to surgery. However, the extent to which these characteristics influence the observed variation is unknown. The objective of this study is to compare time to surgery across provinces among surgically fit patients and their subgroups defined by timing of admission and type of surgery, respectively.

Provinces completed a similar proportion of surgeries within the benchmark, and all provinces required four inpatient days to complete 90% of surgeries. However, variation was observed across provinces in the proportion of patients treated on admission day and the number of inpatient days required to complete 33% and 66% of surgeries overall, by timing of admission, and by type of surgery.