News

New evidence finds no improvement in health care inequality across England and Wales

24 August 2022

A new study has revealed that people living in the most deprived areas were nearly two and a half times more likely to need a hip replacement but far less likely to receive the treatment than their more affluent counterparts.

The research included analysis of the number of hip replacement procedures carried out for patients aged 50 years and over in England and Wales between 2002 and 2018, which more than doubled from 47,971 to 117,726 during that time.

The research and analysis for Wales was undertaken by Senior Research Officer & Statistician, Rowena Bailey of the Health Data Research (HDR) UK centre at Population Data Science, and used individual-level, population-scale, anonymised data from the SAIL Databank.

The study was conducted in partnership with NHS Midlands & Lancashire Commissioning Support Unit, Health Economics Bristol at University of Bristol, The Royal Orthopaedic Hospital NHS Foundation Trust and was funded by HDR UK.

The researchers found no evidence that these substantial inequities had reduced between 2006 and 2016. This would suggest that with respect to hip-replacement surgery in England and Wales, policy ambitions to reduce healthcare inequities have not been realised.

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