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Timely surgery following hip fracture — within 24 or 48 hours — lowers patient morbidity and mortality, but whether subspecialty consultation affects timeliness in patients who are being comanaged by orthopedic surgeons and hospitalists is unknown. Investigators retrospectively evaluated about 500 comanaged patients who were admitted for hip fracture repair at a single U.S. hospital during 2 years.
Patients who received preoperative subspecialty consults (about one third of the cohort) rarely received major recommendations by consultants (<5% of consults). About 90% of all consults were to cardiology. Patients with subspecialty consults were more likely than those without consults to have time to surgery of longer than 24 hours (76% vs. 41%)…