The NHFD is intended to focus attention on hip fracture both locally and nationally, benchmark its care across the country, and use continuous comparative data to create a drive for sustained improvements in clinical standards and cost effectiveness.

Delivering good care for patients with hip fracture is challenging and involves many health professionals including nurses, surgeons, anaesthetists, geriatricians and rehabilitation staff. The quality of that care varies considerably across the country. The combination of care standards, in the form of the BOA-BGS Blue Book on the care of patients with fragility fractures, and Audit (NHFD), will encourage fracture units to develop the interdisciplinary services for rehabilitation and secondary prevention necessary to improve matters for this group of patients.

The NHFD will:

Collect data on patient case mix, care, outcomes and secondary prevention.
Allow case mix-adjusted outcome assessment to promote transparency of inter-hospital comparisons.
Enable hospitals to compare care and outcomes against national benchmarks and quality standards.
Monitor performance over time.
Measure the impact of changes in clinical care and service organization.
Support large-scale research on aspects of hip fracture care, through the use of ‘sprint audits’ and case mix-adjusted outcomes.

The second edition of the BOA-BGS Blue Book on the Care of Patients with Fragility Fracture, confirms the paramount importance of delivering to the rising tide of fragility fracture patients.
Excellent all-round medical care and rehabilitation, despite their many co-morbidities
Excellent surgery, despite the challenges of osteoporotic bone
Reliable secondary prevention, i.e. treatment of underlying osteoporosis or tendency to fall
A mechanism for quality control, namely the NHFD

To participate in the NHFD:

The lead clinician for the NHFD at your hospital should send an email to Maggie Partridge (NHFD Project Manager: London area) maggie@nhfd.co.uk, Andy Williams (NHFD Project Coordinator: South; Wales; Northern Ireland and The Channel Isles) at andy@nhfd.co.uk or Fay Plant (Project Coordinator: The Midlands and the North) fay@nhfd.co.uk, from an NHS email address, requesting access to the database. The email should contain the following information: Name, job title, full address of hospital[s], email address and contact telephone number of all personnel requiring access.
Once registered - a username will be emailed direct; with a request to contact the NCASP helpdesk and a personal password issued.

NB - as an integral part of the registration process you will also be requested to complete a Facilities Audit which will provide the NHFD with essential information regarding your hospital - it is important that this is completed swiftly but it will not delay you commencing your input into the database.

To assist you in effective data collection - an NHFD audit tool is available for you to download:



If you have any queries or would like assistance entering data for the first time please contact:
Project Coordinator, Andy Williams: 07818065915 or via email at andy@nhfd.co.uk
Project Coordinator, Fay Plant: 07792213369 or via email at fay@nhfd.co.uk
Project Manager, Maggie Partridge: 07876 163525 or via email at maggie@nhfd.co.uk

The NHFD have compiled a patient leaflet to inform patients about the national audit and their involvement.... please add your Hospital's NHS logo.
Patients do not consent to participate, but they may opt out if they wish. Please ensure all patients receive a copy or can see an A3 size poster on the ward.

Ethics and Confidentiality Committee (ECC) Approval (formerly PIAG)

The NHFD is approved by the ECC until March 2012, when approval will be reviewed

In addition…..

Does your hospital currently collect any hip fracture data [on excel/access/other]? – we have developed a programme in which we can import and analyse information in line with the NHFD dataset and add to the overall statistics. Contact Andy, Fay or Maggie for further information.

The NHFD aims to promote best practice in the care and secondary prevention of hip fracture - do you have a summary of how hip fractures are managed in your hospital that you would like to share? This could include: strategies adopted to reduce length of stay and improve the quality of care, employment of specialist nurses working in the fracture wards, the support of Consultant Orthogeriatricians etc.