Minimizing Falls In The Hospital: A Case Study

Strategies to Minimize Falls in the Hospital Fall in acute care setting is being an ongoing problem. Many people come to the hospital for one thing but ended up staying a lot longer than expected because of a preventable fall. Most insurance will not pay for other problems that the patient acquired while receiving care in a hospital. Therefore, the hospital has to spend thousands of dollars for fall related injuries. The fall prevention program has been used by many other hospitals throughout the country and they have reported less and less accidental falls every year. The hospital will need to put in place a system where a designated individual will be responsible to round with patients daily to ensure they have bed alarms on, a sign or a bracelet that identify them as high fall risk based on the assessment tools provided to the nursing staff. Also there will be a sheet in the patient rooms where the staff will have to initial that they have been in the room every hour and assess the patient needs. Nursing staff will be reprimanded if not in compliance with the program. Implementing a system that is guarantee to reduce fall rate by 70% is a great investment that the hospital cannot and should not ignore. …show more content…
According to the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (2013), approximately 900,000 cases of falls are reported every year from hospitals around the country. Some of these fall are with serious life threatening injuries. Unfortunately, the hospital is responsible to take on all these extra charges that frankly could have been prevented if all the strategies were in place. As healthcare providers, more can be done to keep patients safe. Implementing the fall prevention strategies is guarantee to decrease fall by 70% by the first