Impact of preoperative specialty consults on hospitalist comanagement of hip fracture patients

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Abstract

Background: Hip fractures typically occur in frail elderly patients. Preoperative specialty consults, in addition to hospitalist comanagement, are often requested for preoperative risk assessment. Objective: Determine if preoperative specialty consults meaningfully influence management and outcomes in hip fracture patients, while being comanaged by hospitalists Design: Retrospective cohort study Setting: Tertiary care hospital in Connecticut Patients: 491 patients aged 50 years and older who underwent surgery for an isolated fragility hip fracture, defined as one occurring from a fall of a height of standing or less. Intervention: Presence or absence of a preoperative specialty consult Measurements: Time to surgery (TTS), length of hospital stay (LOS), and postoperative complications Results: 177 patients had a preoperative specialty consult. Patients with consults were older and had more comorbidities. Most consult recommendations were minor (72.8%); there was a major recommendation only for eight patients (4.5%). Multivariate analysis demonstrates that consults are more likely to be associated with a TTS beyond 24 hours (Odds Ratio [OR] 4.28 [2.79-6.56]) and 48 hours (OR 2.59 [1.52-4.43]), an extended LOS (OR 2.67 [1.78-4.03]), and a higher 30- day readmission rate (OR 2.11 [1.09-4.08]). A similar 30-day mortality rate was noted in both consult and no-consult groups. Conclusions: The majority of preoperative specialty consults did not meaningfully influence management and may have potentially increased morbidity by delaying surgery. Our data suggest that unless a hip fracture patient is unstable and likely to require active management by a consultant, such consults offer limited benefit when weighed against the negative impact of surgical delay.

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Bellas, N., Stohler, S., Staff, I., Majk, K., Lewis, C., Davis, S., & Kumar, M. (2020). Impact of preoperative specialty consults on hospitalist comanagement of hip fracture patients. Journal of Hospital Medicine, 15(1), 16–21. https://doi.org/10.12788/jhm.3264

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