April Falls a timely reminder of need to prevent falls

April Falls a timely reminder of need to prevent falls

Monday 3 April

April marks the start of the annual April Falls campaign, which is being promoted by the Health Quality & Safety Commission, district health boards and other providers of health services for our older people.

Sandy Blake, National Clinical Lead for the Health Quality & Safety Commission’s Reducing Harm from Falls Programme, says falls can have a major impact on your life, whether they happen at home, in the community or in hospital.

“In 2015, nearly 220,000 people over 50 made a claim to ACC for an injury related to a fall, and nearly 26,000 were admitted to hospital because of a fall – these are big numbers, and represent pain, immobility and inconvenience for a large number of people.

“The effects of a fall on older people are most serious. Only half of those over 80 who survive a hip fracture will walk unaided again, and many will not regain their former degree of mobility.

“Between 10 and 20 percent will be admitted to aged residential care as a result of the fracture. Very sadly, 27 percent of those over 80 will die within a year of their hip fracture.”

She says there is also good news.

“Between 1 July 2013 and 31 December 2016, there were 85 fewer in-hospital falls resulting in fractured hips. These results are important because hip fracture is the most common serious fall-related injury in those over 80 years old.”

To help reduce falls in the home, ACC has a simple checklist to identify hazards: ACC falls checklist for the home.

Simple things to keep yourself safe around the home include checking you have non-slip rugs or they are secured to the floor, keeping cords and wires away from walkways or taped down and ensuring stairs and walkways are well-lit with easy to grip handrails.

Background: Falls in people aged 50 and over

• In 2015, 217,000 people aged 50 and over had one or more ACC claims for a fall-related injury accepted.

• This was a significant increase from 170,000 claims in 2011. Claims varied 1.7-fold between DHB.

• Of people aged 85+, 26 percent had at least one ACC claim due to a fall in 2015

• This equated to 58 ACC claims per day among those aged 85+.

• 25,800 people aged 50+ were admitted to hospital with a fall in 2015. Older people and women had higher admission rates.

• Admission rates increased significantly with age: those aged 85 and over had 8 times more admissions than those aged 65–74 and 16 times more admissions than those aged 50–64 years.

• 20,100 people admitted to hospital with a fall stayed more than a day.

• This was 78 percent of all people attending hospital after a fall.

Data is from the Commission’s Atlas of Healthcare Variation – a website that uses maps, graphs, tables and words to show differences in health care in New Zealand by district health board. The falls Atlas domain was updated in March 2017: www.hqsc.govt.nz/atlas/falls/.

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