Helping Older Adults Prevent Fragility Fractures

An innovative program called "Own the Bone” has been developed to enhance the prevention and treatment of osseous fragility fractures, related to osteoporosis or low bone density.

Own the Bone is a U.S. national Web-based quality-improvement registry developed by the American Orthopedic Association (AOA; Rosemont, IL, USA) that features key measures for reducing future fractures, including nutrition counseling and education, physical activity recommendations, lifestyle coaching, pharmacology, and bone density testing. The registry needs only a couple of minutes to enter patient data; once the data has been entered into the registry, the physician can automatically produce informational, system-generated letters to other physicians and to the patients themselves highlighting their risk factors; follow-up data can also be recorded multiple times. The program provides physicians with immediate quantitative feedback to demonstrate how they are positively affecting patient care.

Aimed primarily for healthcare institutions, the program provides multidisciplinary quality improvement, strengthening current bone health programs or helping to launch a new one.

The evidence-based quality improvement program allows institutional subscribers' access to the national web-based registry to track, manage, and run reports on patient data entered into the registry, demonstrating a continued commitment to quality, and proactively addressing potential liability issues for physicians, clinics, or hospital. Institutional subscribers are also given a variety of public relations tools, including internal and external press releases and use of the "Own the Bone” participation logo.

"Research has shown that patients who have had a fragility fracture are four times more likely to experience another fracture than those who have never had a fracture. The Own the Bone program will help us ensure that our patients with fragility fractures are screened and appropriately treated for osteoporosis,” said William Macaulay, M.D., chief of the division of adult reconstruction and director of the center for hip and knee replacement at New York-Presbyterian Hospital/Columbia University Medical Center (NY, USA).

Fragility fractures are broken bones that result from a fall from standing height or less. There are three fracture sites said to be typical of fragility fractures: vertebral fractures, fractures of the neck of the femur, and Colles fracture of the wrist. This definition arises because a normal human being ought to be able to fall from standing height without breaking any bones, and a fracture therefore suggests weakness of the skeleton. As long as other pathologies are excluded (such as cancer), the fracture is diagnostic of osteoporosis irrespective of bone mineral density.

Related Links:
Own the Bone
American Orthopaedic Association
New York-Presbyterian Hospital/Columbia University Medical Center