May is National Osteoporosis Awareness and Prevention Month. Although an estimated 10 million adults in the U.S. have osteoporosis and over 43 million adults have low bone mass, most will go undiagnosed and untreated. This disease, which is so often overlooked, leads to fragility fractures. Fragility fractures can be debilitating for the elderly and sometimes even deadly.
Nearly 25 percent of patients who suffer a hip fracture die within one year. Most of these patients probably had experienced a more minor fracture previously due to osteoporosis, but the underlying disease went undiagnosed and untreated.
Cooper Bone and Joint Institute is one of over 200 health care institutions nationwide that has taken initiative to ensure its osteoporotic fracture patients receive the treatment and care that they deserve by implementing the American Orthopaedic Association’s (AOA) Own the Bone® program.
Own the Bone is a national web-based quality improvement registry that incorporates 10 prevention measures and provides the tools needed for institutions to establish a fracture liaison service (FLS)/secondary fracture prevention program. FLS programs utilize a care coordinator to ensure that post-fracture patients are identified and receive appropriate evaluation, diagnosis, and treatment. The Own the Bone web-based registry offers institutions access to benchmarking capabilities that enable them to document improvements in patient care over time, as well as to compare results with other participating institutions nationwide.
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