Impact of hip fracture on hospital care costs: a population-based study

Using a large cohort of hip fracture patients, we estimated hospital costs to be £14,163 and £2139 in the first and second year following fracture, respectively. Second hip and non-hip fractures were major cost drivers. There is a strong economic incentive to identify cost-effective approaches for hip fracture prevention.The purpose of this study was to estimate hospital costs of hip fracture up to 2 years post-fracture and compare costs before and after the index fracture.A cohort of patients aged over 60 years admitted with a hip fracture in a UK region between 2003 and 2013 were identified from hospital records and followed until death or administrative censoring. All hospital records were valued using 2012/2013 unit costs, and non-parametric censoring methods were used to adjust for censoring when estimating average annual costs. A generalised linear model examined the main predictors of hospital costs.A cohort of 33,152 patients with a hip fracture was identified (mean age 83 years (SD 8.2). The mean censor-adjusted 1- and 2-year hospital costs after index hip fracture were £14,163 (95 % confidence interval (CI) £14,008 to £14,317) and £16,302 (95 % CI £16,097 to £16,515), respectively. Index admission accounted for 61 % (£8613; 95 % CI £8565 to £8661) of total 1-year hospital costs which were £10,964 higher compared to the year pre-event (p