Getting Patients with Hip Injuries Back on Their Feet Using Epic

Hip fractures resulting from falls are some of the most common injuries suffered by older adults, and more than half of Dutch adults are older than 50. Hip fractures can also lead to long inpatient stays and the potential for post-discharge complications. St. Antonius Ziekenhuis, located in the Netherlands, used tools in Epic to coordinate care for patients with hip fractures, reducing the time they spent in the emergency department by 35% and their overall length of stay by 25%.

Staff use a standardized care path in Epic to identify patients with possible hip fractures as soon as they arrive in the ED. Patients are promptly triaged to beds and scheduled for consultations with geriatric physicians, therapists, and other specialists. The multidisciplinary team tracks these patients and evaluates outcomes using dashboards in Epic to maintain an average length of stay of five days or fewer so patients can continue their recovery in the comfort of their own homes.

After only a few weeks, average length of stay was two days shorter.

“Staff love the dashboards,” said Jasper van Kuijk, a project manager at St. Antonius. “All disciplines have access and can track the patient’s progress toward recovery in real time.”

Epic community members can learn more from St. Antonius’s XGM slides and audio.