A scheme that pays hospitals to deliver high quality care has been shown to improve the outcomes for patients with broken hips in England.
© ShutterstockHip fractures are a major cause of death and disability among older people worldwide, with 70,000 cases every year in the UK, which cost the NHS around £2 billion.
In 2010, a Best Practice Tariff (BPT) was launched across England, which promised extra payments to hospitals for each hip fracture patient whose care satisfied six clinical standards, such as surgery within 36 hours.
Researchers from the University of Oxford and Yale University compared the data from England with that in Scotland, which does not provide BPT payments to hospitals. They found that the BPT scheme saved up to 7,600 lives in England between 2010 and 2016.
Read more (University of Oxford website)