Hospitals in the district have scored highly in a report ranking trusts throughout the country on the care they provide for people with hip fractures.

The National Hip Fracture Database includes data submitted by 180 hospitals including Airedale NHS Foundation Trust and Bradford Teaching Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust.

Airedale Hospital treated 249 hip fractures during the past year, of which 83 per cent received surgery within 48 hours and 66.4 per cent were admitted to an orthopaedic ward within four hours. The average length of a stay in Airedale Hospital with hip fractures was 15 days.

Julie Livesey, general manager for trauma and orthopaedics at the Airedale Trust, said: “We are absolutely delighted with our first set of results which demonstrate that the whole multidisciplinary team has worked hard on improving the care for patients which is shown in our 83 per cent rate of patients receiving surgery within 48 hours.

“The database acknowledges that hospitals are unlikely to achieve any higher than 85-90 per cent as there will always be some patients too ill to undergo surgery within the timeframe.”

Airedale orthopaedic consultant Gethin Thomas said: “We are really proud of these results. We have an excellent multi-disciplinary team and employing an orthopaedic nurse practitioner has helped us to achieve them.

“By using the principals of enhanced recovery we have reduced the length of time patients stay in hospital, reduced pain and blood loss during surgery and helped them to get better quickly.”

Bradford Royal Infirmary treated 350 people with hip fractures and 84.4 per cent had surgery within 48 hours and the average length of stay was 13.7 days.

A spokesman said: “The results of this national report show that Bradford Teaching Hospitals is one of the best performers nationally for length of stay in hospital and our ability to send people safely back home within 30 days.

“We are performing comparably with neighbouring trusts across the region and are rated as being above the national average for a number of key standards, scoring well in risk-assessing our patients before discharge.”