Safety climate, leadership and patient views associated with hip fracture care quality and clinician perceptions of hip fracture care performance

Background: Hip fracture is a major public health concern for older adults, requiring surgical treatment for patients presenting at hospitals across Australia. Although guidelines have been developed to drive appropriate care of hip fracture patients in hospitals, data on health outcomes suggest these are not well-followed.

Objective: This study aims to examine whether clinician measures of safety, teamwork and leadership, and patient perceptions of care are associated with key indicators of hip fracture care and the extent to which there is agreement between clinician perceptions of hip fracture care performance and actual hospital performance of hip fracture care.

Methods: Retrospective analysis was performed on a series of questionnaires used to assess hospital department- and patient-level measures from the Deepening our Understanding of Quality in Australia study. Data were analysed from 32 public hospitals that encompassed 23 leading hip fracture clinicians, 716 patient medical records and 857 patients from orthopaedic public hospital wards.

Results: Aggregated across all hospitals, only 5 of 12 of the key hip fracture indicators had ≥50% adherence. Adherence to indicators requiring actions to be performed within a recommended time period was poor (7.2-25.6%). No Patient Measure of Safety or clinician-based measures of teamwork, safety climate or leadership were associated with adherence to key indicators of hip fracture care. Simple proportionate agreement between clinician perceptions and actual hospital performance was generally strong, but few agreement coefficients were compelling.

Conclusion: The development of strong quality management processes requires ongoing effort. The findings of this study provide important insights into the relationship between hospital care and outcomes for hip fracture patients and could drive the design of targeted interventions for improved quality assurance of hip fracture care.