Retrospective Cohort Study
Copyright ©The Author(s) 2022. Published by Baishideng Publishing Group Inc. All rights reserved.
World J Orthop. Aug 18, 2022; 13(8): 725-732
Published online Aug 18, 2022. doi: 10.5312/wjo.v13.i8.725
Higher cost of arthroplasty for hip fractures in patients transferred from outside hospitals vs primary emergency department presentation
Emanuel C Haug, Hakan Pehlivan, J Ryan Macdonell, Wendy Novicoff, James Browne, Thomas Brown, Quanjun Cui
Emanuel C Haug, Wendy Novicoff, James Browne, Thomas Brown, Quanjun Cui, Department of Orthopedic Surgery, University of Virginia, Charlottesville, VA 22908, United States
Hakan Pehlivan, Department of Orthopedic Surgery, Preferred Pediatric Orthopedic Surgery, Ridgewood, NJ 07450, United States
J Ryan Macdonell, Department of Orthopedic Surgery, Asheville Orthopedic Associates, Asheville, NC 28801, United States
Author contributions: Haug EC wrote and revised the manuscript and collected data; Pehlivan H and Macdonell JR contributed equally and helped design the study and collect data; Novicoff W did the statistical portion; Browne J, Brown T and Cui Q are the senior surgeons; and All authors contributed to this study equally.
Institutional review board statement: The study was reviewed and approved by the Institutional Review Board of the University of Virginia and was IRB exempt.
Conflict-of-interest statement: None of the authors have any conflicts of interests to report for this study.
Data sharing statement: Dataset available from the corresponding author at qc4q@hscmail.mcc.virginia.edu.
STROBE statement: The authors have read the STROBE Statement, and the manuscript was prepared and revised according to the STROBE Statement.
Open-Access: This article is an open-access article that was selected by an in-house editor and fully peer-reviewed by external reviewers. It is distributed in accordance with the Creative Commons Attribution NonCommercial (CC BY-NC 4.0) license, which permits others to distribute, remix, adapt, build upon this work non-commercially, and license their derivative works on different terms, provided the original work is properly cited and the use is non-commercial. See: https://creativecommons.org/Licenses/by-nc/4.0/
Corresponding author: Quanjun Cui, MD, Professor, Department of Orthopedic Surgery, University of Virginia, 400 Ray C Hunt Drive, Charlottesville, VA 22908, United States. qc4q@hscmail.mcc.virginia.edu
Received: February 23, 2022
Peer-review started: February 23, 2022
First decision: April 13, 2022
Revised: April 23, 2022
Accepted: July 25, 2022
Article in press: July 25, 2022
Published online: August 18, 2022
Processing time: 174 Days and 9.2 Hours
ARTICLE HIGHLIGHTS
Research background

Rising healthcare expenditure, especially with the projected rise in total joint arthroplasty has lead the Center for Medicare Services to propose bundled payments.

Research motivation

Possible effects of bundle payments on tertiary hospital systems have not been evaluated.

Research objectives

This study aims to evaluate potential effects of bundled payment systems on a large tertiary hospital system.

Research methods

This is a retrospective study of a single hospital system evaluating the observed cost of care for patients presenting with hip fractures from the emergency department, skilled nursing facilities and outside hospital transfers.

Research results

Cost data analysis showed that patient transferred from an outside hospital demonstrate significantly higher costs compared to patients from a skilled nursing facility or the emergency department.

Research conclusions

Given the increased costs associated with patients transferred from outside hospitals this may call for a risk adjustment models when bundling for the care of hip fracture patients.

Research perspectives

Future research will have to further evaluate cost originators to adjust payment models appropriately.