Perspective of potential patients on the hospital volume-outcome relationship and the minimum volume threshold for total knee arthroplasty: a qualitative focus group and interview study

Table 2 Demographic characteristics of participants

	Phase 1: Focus group	Phase 2: Interviews
	Phase 1: Focus group	rural residence	urban residence	total
Sample size (n)	5	7	9	16
Gender
Female	4	2	4	6
Male	1	5	5	10
Age (years)
< 60	2	6	3	9
≥ 60	3	1	6	7
School graduation
None	0	0	0	0
Lower secondary school	1	1	1	2
Intermediate secondary school	1	0	3	3
Tertiary entrance qualification	3	6	5	11
TKA
Previous TKA	2	0	2	2
No previous TKA	3	7	7	14

Note. There were n = 6 participants recruited for Phase 1 and n = 18 participants recruited for Phase 2 (one and two participants, respectively, were unable to attend the scheduled appointments). Most participants were from North Rhine-Westphalia, a relatively densely populated area with no proper rural areas compared to other regions in Germany [37]. The cutoff for ‘urban’ was more than 500 inhabitants per km² [38]. Despite this cutoff, we reclassified one place of residence from urban to rural due to distance to a larger city (> 150,000 inhabitants) and low availability of infrastructure such as hospitals. TKA = total knee arthroplasty

ISSN: 1472-6963