Feature
A step forward in fall prevention
Tuesday January 22, 2008
Incredible effort has been made in recently to minimize falls among Canadian senior citizens at home, in healthcare settings and in the community at large. Hip fractures and head injuries are usually the most common and costly results of falls among the elderly. Now, thanks to innovative programs and support from stakeholders across the board, incidents of falling among people in care are declining.
Canada’s federal healthcare agencies only began looking seriously at the problem of falling in an aging population about seven years ago. Prior to that, fall prevention strategies here were hit-and-miss, the development of them confined largely to whatever was most expedient for each respective service provider. Everyone knew that falls were costly for business and often incapacitating for victims; but there were no overriding strategies for fall prevention, and few supports to implement and sustain them.
With about four million Canadians aged 65 or over in 2006, and a 25 per cent increase expected in the next 10 years, it was clear that a proportional increase in the number of injuries due to falls among people in that age sector would put an incredible burden on our healthcare systems.
OMNI Health Care demonstrated great leadership by proactively addressing the wide range of fall risk factors that could affect their client population, and began identifying best practices in their homes that would reach seniors living there effectively.
The goal was simple: to create safer community environments for older Canadians.
When our national Public Health Agency released its report on Seniors’ Falls in Canada in 2005, OMNI had already taken steps to minimize falls among the hundreds of partners in their long-term care programs. OMNI initiated in-house programs to prevent falls and injuries by raising awareness among all stakeholders, changing both residents’ and staff behaviors to reduce risk factors, revamped physical environments where necessary, and reviewed corporate policies to ensure that all the positive changes being made would be sustainable. The cost recovery, in both human and financial terms would, and will be substantial as a result of OMNI’s efforts.
As one Canadian geriatrician said recently, “Falling should not be considered an inevitable consequence of aging.”
OMNI Health Care took a bold step forward to prevent falls from occurring in their long-term care communities, strengthening partnerships, leadership and sustainable practices based on an understanding that seniors will remain more physically active and less prone to devastating injury, if the processes for prevention are also continuously active.
