Outcome oriented clinical research and quality measurement in fracture care

Abstract Objective The paradigm shift according to the principles of Value-Based Healthcare is receiving growing attention. In Orthopedic Trauma care, there are no defined standards to provide an incentive system to recompensate for quality instead of quantity. The definitions of quality from the patient's view have to be validated and included in the reimbursement cycle. In our Department, we now have fully standardized and structured documentation and outcome measurement workflow from the clinical point of view. Methods We set up a Fracture Registry with a REDCap® Database to document every patient with surgical treatment. Included are all surgically treated fractures of the extremities, excluding the hand. Furthermore pelvic, acetabular, and periprosthetic fractures, joint dislocations, and tendon ruptures. With interfaces to our Clinical Documentation Systems, the administrative effort became very efficient. The interfaces provide a possibility to identify every patient with inclusion criteria and implement reminder feedback for Surgeons. We collect PROMs with the heartbeat-Software, and document CROMs with REDCap®. We merged these data using the software ‘R’. The documentation of each patient is completed with a database for Adverse Events. Results Data-entry rates were less than 50% in 2018 and have reached 99.1% for 2020 and 99.5% for 2021 for surgically treated fracture patients. Until the submission of this abstract, 2382 surgical procedures have been performed at our Department on 2073 hospitalized patients. 972 patients were included in the Fracture Registry (47%). In a feasibility study, we have merged clinical data with the PROMs of patients treated for distal radius (DR) and proximal humerus (PH) fractures. The baseline values for DR of the quality-of-life questionnaire EQ5D was 0.83 (n=144), after 3months 0.9 (n=58) and 0.97 one year after treatment (n=6). Although not more than a trend, we realized the same pattern for PH-patients with an EQ5D-Baseline of 0.75 (n=63), three months values of 0.75 (n=58), and one-year results of 0.87 (n=6). Conclusion Collecting structured data allows combining routine clinical data with PROMs and CROMs. This information is of inestimable value to define the quality of care for Orthopedic Trauma Surgery. Our combination of Databases to collect diagnosis, subjective and objective outcome measures has been proven feasible and showed high data quality.