February 17, 2010  Click Here to read full article

http://www.orthosupersite.com/view.asp?rID=61078

A recent study of Medicare data by University of Iowa investigators indicates that hospitals with a higher degree of orthopedic specialization provide better outcomes for patients undergoing hip or knee replacement surgery.

The findings, which appear in the online version of the British Medical Journal, were based on a retrospective study of nearly 1.3 million Medicare beneficiaries aged 65 years and older who had hip or knee replacement procedures between 2001 and 2005 at 3,818 U.S. hospitals…

…”The findings suggest that more specialized hospitals have better outcomes even after we account for the type of patients each hospital cares for and the number of hip and knee replacement surgeries that each hospital performs,” Tyson Hagen, MD, the lead author of the study, stated in the release…

Reference: Hagen TP, Vaughan-Sarrazin MS, Cram P. Relation between hospital orthopaedic specialisation and outcomes in patients aged 65 and older: retrospective analysis of US Medicare data. BMJ. Published online 2010 Feb 11.