A new article in press in The Journal of Foot & Ankle Surgery examines the “changing dynamics of ankle fracture care across emergency, inpatient, and ambulatory settings.”
Researchers from Medical College of Georgia at Augusta (Ga.) University, Morehouse School of Medicine in Atlanta, and the Department of Orthopaedic Surgery at Grady Memorial Hospital and Emory University School of Medicine in Atlanta, note that ankle fracture care is “increasingly delivered outside inpatient settings, but whether this transition is uniform across patient, fracture, payor, and geographic groups remains unclear.”
The researchers performed a retrospective serial cross-sectional study to evaluate national trends in hundreds of thousands of ankle fracture care across ED, inpatient, and ASC settings from 2016 to 2022 and “identify factors associated with inpatient admission after emergency department presentation.”
They found that emergency department visits increased by 12.0%, ambulatory surgery encounters increased by 33.6%, and inpatient admissions decreased by 1.7% over that time period. Their conclusion: “National ankle fracture care shifted toward ambulatory surgery without a parallel increase in inpatient admissions. Admission remained associated with fracture complexity, age, payor, and geography.”
