I would like to introduce you to our new falls prevention program. North Shore – LIJ health system is embarking on an important new initiative focused on the prevention of falls among our patients. We hope that you will support this exciting new policy.
Falls are of particular relevance to the healthcare setting because they are one of the most commonly reported adverse hospital events. Falls represent a major public health problem around the world. In the hospital setting, approximately 3-20% of inpatients fall at least once during their hospitalization. Of those, 30 to 51% of falls in hospitals result in some injury (Oliver, Healey, & Haines, 2010). This is of critical concern to hospitals since significant hospital costs for care, …show more content…
population ages, fall prevention is more relevant than ever; older, frail individuals are more prone to falls, and the consequences of falls are more severe. According to the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality, between 700,000 and 1 million patients suffer a fall — an unplanned descent to the floor with or without injury — in U.S. hospitals each year (Butcher, 2013).
While patient falls are rare events, they often cause injuries and even death, as well as additional costs. While the majority of patients who fall are not seriously injured, the toll of fall-related injuries is large. The Joint Commission reports that the average increase in a hospital's operational costs for a serious fall-related injury is more than $13,000, and the patient's length of stay increases by an average of 6.27 days (Butcher, 2013). Most current hospitals’ policies include fall risk assessment tools. However, these tools don’t help to prevent falls, they only help to predict them. Fall risk assessments used alone do not reduce the rate of falls. While measuring fall rates is the ultimate test of how your facility or unit is performing, fall rates are limited in that they do not tell you how to improve care. If your fall rate is high, you still need to figure out what specific areas you should focus on. To know where to focus improvement efforts, it is important to measure whether key practices to reduce falls are actually …show more content…
Implementation of safer environment of care - Make environmental adaptations and provide personal devices to reduce risk of fall-related injury. (e.g. flooring, lighting, observation, sign posting, personal aids and possessions, furniture, footwear)
To build an enhanced culture of safety, we need to focus on sensible practices, clear guidelines, and open communication between staff and with patients and their families. Using this collaborative approach, the falls prevention program outlined above will lead to the significant results we’re looking for.
With the population aging, both the number of falls and the costs to treat fall injuries is likely to increase. By 2020, the annual direct and indirect cost of fall injuries is expected to reach $67.7 billion (Englander, Hodson, & Terregrossa). Perhaps the biggest reason to adopt this new policy would be the potential cost savings the hospital would see from a reduced number of falls. Additional benefits from mandating this policy include providing better outcomes that will attract more patients to your hospital, limiting liability insurance and lawsuits resulting from patient falls, and enabling patients to recover faster, decrease their length of stay, and go home with less intensive and costly
Falls are of particular relevance to the healthcare setting because they are one of the most commonly reported adverse hospital events. Falls represent a major public health problem around the world. In the hospital setting, approximately 3-20% of inpatients fall at least once during their hospitalization. Of those, 30 to 51% of falls in hospitals result in some injury (Oliver, Healey, & Haines, 2010). This is of critical concern to hospitals since significant hospital costs for care, …show more content…
population ages, fall prevention is more relevant than ever; older, frail individuals are more prone to falls, and the consequences of falls are more severe. According to the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality, between 700,000 and 1 million patients suffer a fall — an unplanned descent to the floor with or without injury — in U.S. hospitals each year (Butcher, 2013).
While patient falls are rare events, they often cause injuries and even death, as well as additional costs. While the majority of patients who fall are not seriously injured, the toll of fall-related injuries is large. The Joint Commission reports that the average increase in a hospital's operational costs for a serious fall-related injury is more than $13,000, and the patient's length of stay increases by an average of 6.27 days (Butcher, 2013). Most current hospitals’ policies include fall risk assessment tools. However, these tools don’t help to prevent falls, they only help to predict them. Fall risk assessments used alone do not reduce the rate of falls. While measuring fall rates is the ultimate test of how your facility or unit is performing, fall rates are limited in that they do not tell you how to improve care. If your fall rate is high, you still need to figure out what specific areas you should focus on. To know where to focus improvement efforts, it is important to measure whether key practices to reduce falls are actually …show more content…
Implementation of safer environment of care - Make environmental adaptations and provide personal devices to reduce risk of fall-related injury. (e.g. flooring, lighting, observation, sign posting, personal aids and possessions, furniture, footwear)
To build an enhanced culture of safety, we need to focus on sensible practices, clear guidelines, and open communication between staff and with patients and their families. Using this collaborative approach, the falls prevention program outlined above will lead to the significant results we’re looking for.
With the population aging, both the number of falls and the costs to treat fall injuries is likely to increase. By 2020, the annual direct and indirect cost of fall injuries is expected to reach $67.7 billion (Englander, Hodson, & Terregrossa). Perhaps the biggest reason to adopt this new policy would be the potential cost savings the hospital would see from a reduced number of falls. Additional benefits from mandating this policy include providing better outcomes that will attract more patients to your hospital, limiting liability insurance and lawsuits resulting from patient falls, and enabling patients to recover faster, decrease their length of stay, and go home with less intensive and costly