Launched in 2007, the National Hip Fracture Database (NHFD) is a clinically led web-based audit of hip fracture care and secondary prevention in England, Wales and Northern Ireland. It collects data on all patients admitted to hospital with hip fractures and improves their care through auditing which is fed back to hospitals through targeted reporting.
Making clinical audit data transparent
In his transparency and open data letter to cabinet ministers on 7 July 2011, the then Prime Minister, David Cameron, made a commitment to make clinical audit data available from the national audits within the National Clinical Audit and Patient Outcomes Programme (NCAPOP). This data will be released in an open and standardised format and provided annually from then onwards.
Covering hospitals in England, Wales and Northern Ireland, NHFD audit data includes information about data completeness, case-mix and care.
What information is being made available?
NHFD level data on care processes in England and Wales only. The data does not include details of individual patients or any patient identifiable data.
Using and interpreting the data
Data from the NHFD requires careful interpretation, and the information should not be looked at in isolation when assessing standards of care. Data is provided by every participating eligible hospital in England, Wales and Northern Ireland.
Accessing the data
The data is being made available on the data.gov.uk website and on this page. Each year four files of data from the NHFD will be made available in Excel format. Participating hospitals are identified by name.
What does the data cover?
The data documents show hospital level performance with defined clinical standards for hip fracture care and management. Details of these standards can be found in the NHFD audit report. The audit was initiated to measure primarily against NICE clinical guidelines and quality standards.
What period does the data cover?
Annual report - January 2020 to December 2020
For the latest annual report, the NHFD audit data was extracted from the NHFD database in early 2021, and covers patients admitted to hospital with a hip or femoral fracture between 1 January 2020 and 31 December 2020.