The percentage of elderly persons in Taiwan has continually increased, from 2.5% in 1951 to 8.26% in 1998; the current number of elderly is 1,811,335. As in other countries with an increasing aging population, hip fracture represents a major and growing health care problem in Taiwan. Hip fractures resulted in 15,000 hospital admissions in 1997. It is estimated that the incidence rate (per 100, 000) for hip fracture in Taiwan was 211 for Taiwan's elderly population in 1993, 10 times the incidence rate for the general population. Despite advanced treatments, the one-year mortality rate for hip fracture remains significant (15.4%), and a majority of patients never recover completely in terms of activities of daily living. The economic costs of hip fractures among the elderly are huge and families suffer from caregiving burdens. Many studies in the United States have shown that elderly patients with hip fracture can benefit from post-operative rehabilitation, early discharge planning, and transitional care. However, little is known about what interventions should be attempted for these patients and their family caregivers in Taiwan. The purpose of this experimental study is therefore to explore the effectiveness of an intervention program for older patients with hip fracture. The cost of this care model will also be estimated.

An intervention program will be developed in the first year. This program will be administered by a multidisciplinary health care team and will include a geriatric consultation service, an in-hospital and in-home rehabilitation program and a discharge planning component. During the first year, a pilot study consisting of 10 elderly patients with hip fracture and their caregivers in the experimental group and 10 in the control group will test the feasibility of the intervention program and establish a reference point for sample size modification. In the second and third years, a primary clinical trial will be conducted in Chang Gung Memorial Hospital in Lin Kuo. In this studies, 120 subjects who meet the sample criteria will be recruited and randomly assigned to the experimental and control group. Patients in the experimental group will receive regular hospital routine care and the intervention program. Patients in the control group will receive only routine hospital care. The outcome variables will include clinical outcomes, self-care ability, quality of life, family caregiving outcomes, patient and caregiver's satisfaction, and service utilization; data on those will be collected for one year after hospital discharge and compared between the experimental and control groups. Data on the cost of care will also be collected. A qualitative component will include in-depth interviews with five patients and their family caregivers from the experimental group, five from the control group and five health care providers, to explore the effects of the intervention program in detail. In the fourth and fifth years, a validation clinical trial will be conducted with 120 subjects. The intervention program will be implemented at a different medical center to validate the results of the primary clinical trial. The study results will provide suggestions for intervention protocols for elderly persons with hip fracture and guidelines for the development of intervention programs for other high-risk elderly persons in Taiwan. The findings also provide a reference for clinical and hospital administration decisions.