One in Three Hip Fracture Patients Has Hip Replacement Surgery

AHRQ News and Numbers

Release date: January 4, 2006

One-third of the 310,000 Americans hospitalized for hip fracture in 2003 underwent hip replacement surgery, according to data from the Department of Health and Human Services' Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (AHRQ).

AHRQ's data also show that:

• Hospitals billed Medicare and other payers nearly $9.2 billion for hip fracture care, including stays for hip fracture surgery patients.
• The average charge for a hospital stay for hip fracture was $30,000—nearly 50 percent higher than the average charge for hospital stays as a whole.
• Patients aged 65 and older accounted for almost 90 percent of all hospital stays for hip fracture.
• Nearly three-fourths of all hip fracture patients were women.
• Eight of every 10 hip fracture patients were admitted through the emergency department.
• Three of every four hip fracture patients were discharged to a nursing home or rehabilitation facility.

This information was produced using HCUPnet, an online query system that provides access to health statistics and information on hospital stays from AHRQ's Healthcare Cost and Utilization Project (HCUP). The project comprises a family of health care databases and related software tools developed through a Federal-State-industry partnership and sponsored by AHRQ.

HCUP includes the largest set of publicly available databases on all patients in the United States, regardless of type of insurance or whether the patients had insurance. To access HCUPnet, go to http://hcupnet.ahrq.gov/.

If you would like more information or wish to speak with an AHRQ data expert about these statistics, please contact Bob Isquith at RIsquith@ahrq.gov or (301) 427-1539.

Internet Citation:

One in Three Hip Fracture Patients Has Hip Replacement Surgery. AHRQ News and Numbers, January 4, 2006. Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality, Rockville, MD. http://www.ahrq.gov/news/nn/nn010406.htm