Orthopaedic and trauma surgery in France: Do patterns differ across healthcare institution types (public community, public university, private not-for-profit, and private for-profit)?

BACKGROUND

No studies have evaluated, to our knowledge, potential differences in practices in France according to type of healthcare institution, i.e., university public hospital, community public hospital, or private hospital with or without participation in the public healthcare system. The objectives of this study of the exhaustive information collected in the French hospital-admission database were to: (1) describe the numbers of the main procedures performed in France by orthopaedic and trauma surgeons in each type of institution and each subspecialty; and (2) to determine whether the pattern of procedures differed according to the type of healthcare institution.

HYPOTHESIS: Differences in surgical practice patterns exist across healthcare institution types and according to the nature of the procedures.

PATIENTS AND

METHODS

A retrospective observational nationwide study was performed using the exhaustive French hospital database. All surgical procedures done in 2019 for orthopaedic and trauma indications were collected. We then classified the procedures according to the most common diagnoses by distinguishing procedures on the hip, knee, shoulder, hand, spine, ankle, and foot, as well as paediatric and traumatology procedures.

RESULTS

Procedures performed more often in private institutions included those on the hip (93,225 [64.3%] of 144,919), knee (223,542 [75.5%] of 296,255), shoulder (103,923 [76.6%] of 300,577), hand (408,035 [77.6%] of 525,534), spine (for degenerative disease, 27,001 [71.2%] of 37,915), and ankle and foot (75,392 [77.1%] of 105,720). In contrast, of the 19,157 (80.3%) of the 23,848 paediatric procedures and 203,090 (67.7%) of the 300,065 traumatology procedures were done in public institutions. For all eight comparisons, the difference between public and private institutions was statistically significant. The overall trend was towards public university hospitals performing more paediatric and trauma procedures and more complex surgeries such as those required by multiple traumatic injuries.

DISCUSSION: Our study provides accurate numbers of surgical procedures done in public and private healthcare institutions in France in 2019. We found major differences not only across categories and specialties but also within specialties depending on the type of procedure. Orthopaedic surgical activity shows a marked imbalance in France between public and private institutions. Further research would be needed to identify the causes.

LEVEL OF EVIDENCE: IV, retrospective observational epidemiological study.