The Challenge:
Patient Fall Prevention
Patient fall with serious injury is one of the top 10 sentinel events
3
MILLION
number of older people treated in emergency departments for fall injuries each year
$50+
BILLION
is spent on medical costs related to non-fatal fall injuries and $754 million is spent related to fatal falls
Falls by the Numbers
According to the Center for Disease Control (CDC), as the number of Americans age 65 and older grows, we can expect the number of fall injuries and associated costs to treat these injuries to soar.
An Older Adult Falls Every Second of Every Day
Falls affect us all—whether personally or someone we love or care about.
While all people who fall are at risk of injury, the age, gender and health of the individual can affect the type and severity of injury.
Older people have the highest risk of death or serious injury arising from a fall and the risk increases with age. For example, in the U.S., 20–30% of older people who fall suffer moderate to severe injuries such as bruises, hip fractures, or head trauma.*
Cost of Patient Falls
Researchers estimate total 2015 health care expenditures for nonfatal falls in the U.S. at $49.5
billion—$28.9 billion for Medicare, $8.7 billion for Medicaid, and $12 billion for other payment sources including private insurance and out-of-pocket expense. In the U.S., patient falls with injuries is a “Never Event” and CMS will not reimburse healthcare facilities for care related to these events.
The World Health Organization (WHO) projects that global annual cost of patient falls could reach $240 billion by 2040.
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Prevention is Key
The Joint Commission (TJC) recommends the following actions to help health care organizations prevent falls and fall-related injury:
The Joint Commission Recommendation
How Cognito Health Helps
Lead an effort to raise awareness of the need to prevent falls resulting in injury.
“This should be done by a champion of fall reduction within the facility. Deploying the Cognito system can continually reinforce awareness of the need to prevent falls.
Establish an interdisciplinary falls injury prevention team or evaluate the membership of the team in place to assure organizational infrastructure and capacity to reduce injury risk from falls.
Use a standardized, validated tool to identify risk factors for falls
Download Morse Fall Scale or Hendrich II Fall Risk Model
Develop an individualized plan of care based on identified fall and injury risks, and implement interventions specific to a patient, population or setting.
The Cognito system monitors, tracks and analyzes each patient’s movement to help your team create individualized patient care plans
Standardize and apply practices and interventions demonstrated to be effective
The Cognito system allows you to assign patients to multiple caregivers and sends alerts to their mobile device— allowing your team to match resources to need and improve care for vulnerable patient populations
Conduct post-fall management, which includes: a post-fall huddle; a system of honest, transparent reporting; trending and analysis of falls which can inform improvement efforts; and reassess the patient.
The Cognito key performance indicator (KPI) dashboard provides report summaries to identify patient care trends, falls avoided, alert response times and efficiency gains
Cognito Health Can Reduce Patient Falls by 43%*
The Cognito system uses advanced algorithms to monitor, track and predict patient falls before they happen. Our key performance indicator (KPI) dashboard provides management reporting and patient-specific data by unit and by facility to help create individualized care plans, improve staff and enterprise efficiency and drive better purchasing decisions.