[The hospital service misuse problem in orthopedics]

In a representative study for all German acute hospitals the amount of inappropriate (medically not necessary) patient care was estimated. The data material, sampling design, weighting technic and the appropriateness expert rating (retrospective, consent judging) was controlled. An overall proportion of inappropriate days of care of 18.45% were found but for orthopedic diseases this rate was 31.9% and even 37.7% for the younger than 60 orthopedic patients. Similar high rates for orthopedic diseases were found in US hospital studies of inappropriateness and should lead to an analysis of their reasons.