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RCP awarded 3-year contract to deliver Falls and Fragility Fracture Audit

The Royal College of Physicians (RCP) has again won the contract to deliver the Falls and Fragility Fracture Audit Programme (FFFAP) for the next 3 years.

Following an open tender process, the contract was commissioned by the Healthcare Quality Improvement Partnership (HQIP) on behalf of NHS England and Welsh Government.

Dr Antony Johansen, FFFAP senior clinical lead, said:

We are delighted to have been awarded this contract. Over the last decade, FFFAP has driven huge improvements in the care offered to patients and mortality has almost halved. Our work has used hip fracture rates as a marker of the quality of the multidisciplinary care offered to all frail and older people by the NHS.

With further funding, FFFAP can continue to build on its successes and integrate it with work on primary and secondary prevention to avoid so many people suffering devastating injuries like this in the future.

Iona Price, FFFAP Patient and Carer Network representative, said:

I am very pleased that the RCP will continue to deliver the FFFAP programme. Having a fall or hip fracture can be life changing for an individual, particularly for the elderly. With an ageing population, it’s hugely important we ensure that as many falls are prevented as possible, to help reduce the strain on the NHS and the impact upon patients.

I look forward to working with the programme in helping to improve the care offered to patients.

The RCP’s multidisciplinary FFFAP team, led by consultants in geriatrics, orthopaedics, rheumatology and physiotherapy, will work closely with patient representatives, professional bodies, royal colleges, patient charities, and other stakeholders to develop the content and methodology for the programme, collecting data in near-real-time.

Notes to editors

About FFFAP

The Falls and Fragility Fracture Audit Programme (FFFAP) is an NHS quality improvement programme that has dramatically improved the care of elderly people and has helped reduce the number of patients suffering from falls, and improved the level of support and treatment received.

Falls, and the fractures that result from them, cost the NHS over £2 billion annually. The majority of patients are over the age of 50.

With an ageing population, falls and fragility fractures are national priorities for the NHS. Better quality of care and prevention are key measures in the public health, social care and commissioning elements in setting standards of care.

FFFAP is a high-profile national clinical audit commissioned by the Healthcare Quality Improvement Partnership (HQIP) on behalf of NHS England and Welsh Government, and consists of three work streams:

  • National Hip Fracture Database (NHFD) – a continuous national clinical audit of the care offered to the 65,000 people who suffer this injury each year in England, Wales and Northern Ireland
  • Fracture Liaison Service Database (FLSDB) – a continuous national clinical audit that seeks to define the secondary prevention of osteoporosis and falls provided to over a quarter of a million people who suffer a fragility fracture each year
  • National Audit of Inpatient Falls (NAIF) – a clinical audit of falls prevention in hospitals. NAIF is currently delivered as a spotlight audit, but will move to a continuous model from 2018/19 capturing data on falls prevention and post fall interventions for people who suffer a fragility hip fracture while in hospital.

You can find out more about the project by contacting fffap@rcplondon.ac.uk.