LENGTH OF HOSPITAL STAY OF PATIENTS UNDERGOING HIP AND KNEE REPLACEMENTS – DEVELOPMENT FROM 1996/1997 T 2007/2007 IN SCOTLAND

Abstract

Hip and knee arthroplasty account for over 95 000 hospital days annually in Scotland. The gross cost of over £81 million can be reduced by £10 million by decreasing length of stay by just one day per patient.

We performed a retrospective analysis of the data from the Scottish Arthroplasty Project (SAP). We specifically looked at length of stay in patients undergoing total hip and knee replacements between 1996 and 2007. We analysed the data on over

91000 total hip and knee replacements. In addition we looked at the influence of age, volume and day of admission on the 2007 data

Over the 11 year period there were significant variations in improved length of stay across the health boards. For the 2007 data, we found that patients treated in boards with high patient volume had shorter hospital stays. Admission policy and age of the patients affected the length of stay it did not account for the large differences between health boards.

The data from the Scottish Arthroplasty Project shows that higher surgical volume correlates with reduced length of stay in arthroplasty patients. The reasons for this are likely to be multifactorial but generalisable and need to be examined more closely with another study.