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

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Abstract

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 < 0.001). University hospitals had a lower inpatient mortality rate than full and basic care providers (2.8% vs. both 4.0%); results confirmed in our multivariate logistic regression analysis (odds ratio (OR) 1.434, 95% CI 1.127–1.824 and OR 1.459, 95% confidence interval (CI) 1.139–1.870 for full and basic coverage hospitals vs. university hospitals respectively). The proportion of privately insured varied between 16.0% in university hospitals and 38.9% in specialized hospitals. Private insurance had an OR of 1.419 (95% CI 1.306–1.542) in predicting treatment of a hip fracture with primary hip replacement.

Conclusion

The seeming importance of insurance type on hip fracture treatment and the large inequity in the distribution of privately insured between provider types would be worth a closer look by the regulatory authorities. Better outcomes, i.e., lower mortality rates for hip fracture treatment in hospitals with a higher structural care level advocate centralization of care.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Medical Directorate, University Hospital Zurich, Rämistr. 100, 8091, Zurich, Switzerland

    Tarun Mehra & Rudolf M. Moos

  2. Epidemiology, Biostatistics, and Prevention Institute, University of Zurich, Hirschengraben 84, 8001, Zurich, Switzerland

    Burkhardt Seifert & Matthias Bopp

  3. Institute for General Practice, University Hospital of Zurich, Pestalozzistrasse 24, 8091, Zurich, Switzerland

    Oliver Senn

  4. Division of Trauma Surgery, University Hospital Zurich, Rämistr. 100, 8091, Zurich, Switzerland

    Hans-Peter Simmen, Valentin Neuhaus & Bernhard Ciritsis

Authors
  1. Tarun Mehra
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  2. Rudolf M. Moos
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  3. Burkhardt Seifert
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  4. Matthias Bopp
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  5. Oliver Senn
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  6. Hans-Peter Simmen
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  7. Valentin Neuhaus
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  8. Bernhard Ciritsis
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Corresponding author

Correspondence to Tarun Mehra.

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Financial disclosures

No additional sources of funding other than routine budgets of the institutions to which the authors were affiliated were used to fund this study.

Ethics committee approval

The data consists of fully anonymized data obtained from the Swiss Federal Statistical Office. Therefore, no ethics approval was needed for this study.

Conflicts of interest

Apart from a patent relating to hip fracture prevention owned by Dr. Ciritsis (Patent Nr. EP 121 52 057.1), the authors have no further conflicts of interest to declare.

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Mehra, T., Moos, R.M., Seifert, B. et al. Impact of structural and economic factors on hospitalization costs, inpatient mortality, and treatment type of traumatic hip fractures in Switzerland. Arch Osteoporos 12, 7 (2017). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11657-016-0302-3

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