Inpatient falls are painful for patients and hospitals
Falls in healthcare settings are amongst the most adverse events reported in hospitals. In the US, they happen to 2% (700,000 to 1,000,000) of the patients during their stay and are most prevalent among elderly. Furthermore, in long-term care settings, falls are more frequent, occurring in nearly half of the 1.6M nursing home residents each year. 80% of falls occur in patients aged 65 and over and 30% experience injuries that decrease mobility and quality of life. The injuries sustained can be mild, but often are serious such as hip fractures and head trauma leading to a cascading events of declining health.
The consequences of inpatient falls are costly for all stakeholders. Falls add, on average, 6.3 days of hospitalization, and cost anywhere between $14-30K [3,4] per patient depending on the severity of the injury. Moreover, falls are under the Hospital-Acquired Condition umbrella, meaning that hospitals are not reimbursed by Medicare, totaling $34 billion paid by the US healthcare system each year as a result of inpatient falling incidents.
With the aging population steadily rising, those costs are estimated to increase to over $100 billion by 2030. Consequently, health institutions have implemented fall prevention programs, and fall risk assessments nationwide to decrease the number of incidences.
In clinical settings, bed exit alert technologies typically utilize pressure pads, motion detectors, pull string alarms, and/or call lights. However, they do have their drawbacks regarding compliance and adoption from both staff and patients. Furthermore, they require maintenance, disinfection between patients, battery replacement, some of them involve active manipulation of the solution by the patient and in general, the level of false alerts resulting in patient discomfort and staff alert fatigue is relatively high. However, they do reduce falling incidents by at least 20-25%.
The numbers say it all; detecting when patients leave their bed and maximizing their safety should be a priority. A seamless and stressful approach to protect patients, namely elderly must be made available to healthcare professionals. However, medical staff are dealing with too many medical devices than can be handled. On the other hand, advances in technology are great and impressive. So how about having an all-inclusive platform?
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References
1- Patient Safety Network.
2- Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality.
3- Joint Commission Center for Transforming Healthcare.
4- Johns Hopkins.
5- National Council on Aging.
6- Cuttler, S.J. et al. (2017) BMJ Open Qual. 6, e000119.