The hip fracture care at West Suffolk Hospital has been named as the best in East Anglia and the sixth best in the country.

The care at the Bury St Edmunds Hospital has been ranked by the National Hip Fracture Database, which audits hospital trusts across the country.

Hip fracture is the most common serious injury in older people, often resulting in lengthy hospital stays with only a minority of patients regaining their previous abilities and often needing long-term care.

The care in Bury involves a whole range of staff and departments, including specialists from the emergency department, orthopaedics, elderly medicine and physiotherapy.

The trust has been praised for keeping the length of hospital stays to a minimum and for the high number of patients receiving surgery on the day or day after they are admitted.

Samuel Parsons, orthopaedic consultant, said: “Patient care is our priority and it is our team effort and organised approach that enables us to deliver this high quality service for the community.

“We see a lot of elderly patients with hip fractures and using the criteria set by the National Hip Fracture Database as a way to measure our effectiveness means we continuously aim to improve outcomes for them.

“For example, ensuring patients are mobilised out of bed the day after surgery not only means they feel better and are on their way to getting home, but that they are less likely to be affected by conditions such as pressure ulcers, common in people confined to lying in bed or sitting for prolonged periods of time.

“For our more elderly patients, hip surgery can really take its toll on their health.

“They are sometimes very frail when they come to us, so it is paramount that we act quickly to enable them to regain mobility and a good quality of independent life.”

The hospital was one of the first trusts in the country to implement an integrated, streamlined approach to hip fracture care. The quality of care has meant other hospitals often visit to learn and emulate the practices in Bury St Edmunds.

Fracture clinic stats West Suffolk Hospital achieved 85.1% in the best practice tariff as ranked by the National Hip Fracture Database.

This is the highest in the east region, against a national average of 65.6%

100% of patients received a bone health assessment (national average 97.2%)

88.2% of patients had surgery on the day of, or day after, admission (national average 71.5%)

80.2% of patients were mobilised out of bed on the day after surgery (national average 76.1%)

The average overall length of stay in days was 17 (national average 21.1 days)