Scottish Hip Fracture Audit
Reporting on 2025

About this release

The Scottish Hip Fracture Audit (SHFA) is one of the Scottish National Audit Programme (SNAP) audits and collects details of the care that people receive for hip fracture during a stay in hospital. The audit uses the 12 Scottish standards of care for hip fracture patients to measure how well hospital teams are performing and identifies areas for improvement. The information is passed on to clinical teams, every month, so that they can continually improve.

This report provides information about how well the standards of care were adhered to between January 2025 to December 2025. The report also contains details of the measures that the SHFA uses to highlight differences in care and outcomes, between Scottish hospitals, referred to as key performance indicators or KPIs.

Further details about the audit, standards of care and the SNAP governance process can be found on our website.

Main points

• The number of patients sustaining a hip fracture increases with age. Patient numbers are highest in the older age groups, and females account for more cases than males across most age bands.
• 80% of patients were admitted from their own home, but fewer than 70% returned home within 30 days.
• Admissions from home increased overall between 2017 and 2025 across all age groups. The highest numbers were consistently seen in patients aged 80–89 years, with a decline around 2020 followed by a subsequent increase.
• People living in the most deprived areas who sustain a hip fracture do so at a significantly younger age (males 75 vs 82 years; females 79 vs 83 years).
• A total of 831 patients (10%) were transferred between acute hospitals for ongoing care, usually from remote or island hospitals. Transferred patients were slightly younger (mean age 78.9 years compared with 80.4 years for those not transferred), reflecting issues of fair access and faster care.
• Thirty-day survival remains high across all levels of deprivation, with similar outcomes observed regardless of Scottish Index of Multiple Deprivation (SIMD) quintile.

A horizontal bar graph which shows the achievement of each of the 12 standards of care for hip fracture patients as a percentage. There are results available for 2017, 2021, 2023, 2024 and 2025. Further details are available in the main report.

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SHFA standards 2025

Background

People who suffer from a hip fracture are usually frail and elderly and at risk of complications from surgery and/or the injury. This can be associated with increased length of stay in hospital, admission to care homes, and mortality.

The Scottish Hip Fracture Audit reports on the care people receive for hip fracture during a stay in hospital. The Scottish Standards of Care for hip fracture patients are used to measure this care and the results support the collaborative work between the Scottish Government, PHS and Health Boards to continually drive improvements.

Since 2017 the audit results have been based on data collected about all hip fracture patients, prior to this a sample of patient care was used.

Data are collected by Local Audit Co-ordinators based in each hospital and submitted to PHS for analysis and report production.

Further information

The next release of this publication will be August 2027.