Random forest predictive modeling of prolonged hospital length of stay in elderly hip fracture patients

Background In elderly individuals suffering from hip fractures, a prolonged hospital length of stay (PLOS) not only heightens the probability of patient complications but also amplifies mortality risks. Yet, most elderly hip fracture patients present compromised baseline health conditions. Additionally, PLOS leads to increased expenses for patient treatment and care, while also diminishing hospital turnover rates. This, in turn, jeopardizes the prompt allocation of beds for urgent cases. Methods A retrospective study was carried out from October 2021 to November 2023 on 360 elderly hip fracture patients who underwent surgical treatment at West China Hospital. The 75th percentile of the total patient cohort’s hospital stay duration, which was 12 days, was used to define prolonged hospital length of stay (PLOS). The cohort was divided into training and testing datasets with a 70:30 split. A predictive model was developed using the random forest algorithm, and its performance was validated and compared with the Lasso regression model. Results Out of 360 patients, 103 (28.61%) experienced PLOS. A Random Forest classification model was developed using the training dataset, identifying 10 essential variables. The Random Forest model achieved perfect performance in the training set, with an area under the curve (AUC), balanced accuracy, Kappa value, and F1 score of 1.000. In the testing set, the model’s performance was assessed with an AUC of 0.846, balanced accuracy of 0.7294, Kappa value of 0.4325, and F1 score of 0.6061. Conclusion This study aims to develop a prognostic model for predicting delayed discharge in elderly patients with hip fractures, thereby improving the accuracy of predicting PLOS in this population. By utilizing machine learning models, clinicians can optimize the allocation of medical resources and devise effective rehabilitation strategies for geriatric hip fracture patients. Additionally, this method can potentially improve hospital bed turnover rates, providing latent benefits for the healthcare system.