Preventing Patient Falls

With the growing concern over “Never Events” and the huge costs connected with them, hospitals are striving to lower the occurrence of Never Events—to save both their patients’ trust and their budgets.

Although Never Events are considered preventable, some are far more prevalent than others. Patient Injury or Death resulting from a fall inside the hospital is a particularly high risk Never Event. As a result, additional concern should be applied to preventing patient falls.

The Cost of Patient Falls

Aside from lowering the safety reputation of a hospital, patient falls are a large financial burden as well. Since patient injury or death due to falls are included on the list of “Never Events” published by the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) for 2009, hospitals are denied full reimbursement should any such event occur. Patient falls can cost even a small hospital tens of thousands of dollars annually, not including the cost of any resulting litigation.

See also the White Paper, “An Assessment of Falls in Patients’ Rooms and Methods of Prevention” which analyzes the severity of patient fall liability for hospitals; and methods of fall prevention.

Fall Prevention Methods

The great burden to reduce patient falls has led hospitals to incorporate many different methods and techniques over the years aimed at lowering patient fall rates. Risk-assessment tools have been popular in hospitals. Such tools include:

• The Morse Fall Scale
• The STRATIFY tool
• The Hendrich II Fall Risk Model
• Schmid Fall Risk Assessment Tool

Falls prevention programs have also been utilized. These programs can be used to educate both nurses and patients regarding fall risk factors and injuries that can result from falls. Some hospitals have even used extensive physical therapy to reduce the risk of falls for individual patients.

Fall Prevention Technology

From a technological standpoint, many devices have been implemented to help nurses respond rapidly to fall-risk patients. Bed fall alert systems and monitoring systems utilize a variety of alerts, both visual and auditory, to help nurses respond more quickly.

Recently, new technologies have become available, such as Dalcon Alert!, which integrates with patient monitoring systems and sends alarms directly to nurses regardless of their location.  Because nurses receive patient monitoring alarms immediately with Dalcon Alert!, they can quickly react to alerts, and proactively reduce patient falls.