Prehospital fast track care for patients with hip fracture: Impact on time to surgery, hospital stay, post-operative complications and mortality a randomised, controlled trial.

Ambulance organisations in Sweden have introduced prehospital fast track care (PFTC) for patients with suspected hip fracture. This means that the ambulance nurse starts the pre-operative procedure otherwise implemented at the accident & emergency ward (A&E) and transports the patient directly to the radiology department instead of A&E. If the diagnosis is confirmed, the patient is transported directly to the orthopaedic ward. No previous randomised, controlled studies have analysed PFTC to describe its possible advantages. The aim of this study is to examine whether PFTC has any impact on outcomes such as time to surgery, length of stay, post-operative complications and mortality