Dive Brief:
- Epic is developing a clinical decision tool called "STEADI" (Stopping Elderly Accidents, Deaths & Injuries), expected to be ready by the end of this year.
- The tool is based on CDC guidelines for falls assessment, with the goal of making it easier for healthcare providers to screen for falls, intervene to reduce risk and provide follow-up care.
- Kaiser Permanente will be the first to utilize the tool at its nationwide facilities and make its evidence-based falls prevention program available to other health systems and plans.
Dive Insight:
Falls are a serious problem within hospitals, resulting in costly injuries and 11,000 fatalities annually according to the Joint Commission. But there is no easy solution. In an effort to develop a more standardized approach, federal officials last summer announced a $30 million national study of a patient-centered approach to prevent fall-related injuries. Nurses will be trained to deliver individualized fall prevention plans to patients and monitor patient outcomes with PCPs.
Decreasing falls helps defray costs: A North Carolina Hospital implemented a fall prevention program and reduced its patient fall rate by 22% to 2.5 per 1,000 patient days. That resulted in savings of more than $500,000, based on national figures calculating each fall costs a hospital between $8,000 and $13,000. New Hanover Regional Medical Center formed a patient safety services fall team that discovered 54% of falls were due to medicated or disoriented patients with physical impairments who tripped in unfamiliar surroundings or were unable to reach the bathroom. The hospital then took simple, inexpensive steps. Among them: nurses checking on patients hourly and giving meds in a way to make it likelier they’ll sleep through the night; and identifying high-risk patients and placing walkers in their rooms.