[ad_1]
Claims from falls cost Aotearoa New Zealand more than
$1.5 billion every year, a figure which has increased year
on year since 2015 according to ACC*. Recognising this huge
burden on individual patients, whānau, and ultimately the
healthcare sector, leading healthcare provider ProCare
recently dedicated one of its Better Together Collaboratives
to falls prevention in a bid to identify older people most
at risk of falls and refer them to strength and balance
training.
Dr Sue Wells, Associate Clinical Director
for Population Health at ProCare says, “Around a third of
over 65s will suffer a fall every year – of these
individuals, around 4% end up in hospital and 1% suffer a
hip fracture**. For what in many cases can be a preventable
injury, a fall can have significant consequences for the
individual, particularly for maintaining activities of daily
living and requiring increased whānau support and
rehabilitation in the community. For some older people, a
fall may signal the end of independent living and
necessitate moving into aged residential
care.
“There is strong evidence that strength and
balance-based exercises reduce falls by up to 42% and this
intervention may be the most cost-effective approach to fall
prevention at a population level***,” continues Dr
Wells.
ProCare’s Better Together Collaboratives are
an evidence-based quality improvement methodology bringing
together teams from different general practices to work in a
structured way to improve aspects of their service to
patients. They involved learning about best practice,
quality improvement tools, skills and change ideas, as well
as practice staff sharing their experiences of making
improvements in their local settings.
“Our Better
Together Collaborative devoted to falls prevention had great
results. Those who participated in the collaborative
increased their completion of falls risk assessments by 11
percentage points compared to a 4 percentage point increase
for the rest of the network,” continues Dr
Wells.
“Most pleasingly, we saw an 18 percentage
point increase for Māori and 10 percentage point increase
for Pacific in falls risk assessment,” she
continues****.
“Using falls assessments helps
doctors understand the root cause of any potential falls,
from physical ability, underlying medical conditions or home
safety. Taking preventative measures such as exercising
regularly, reviewing medication, assessing footwear, and
getting a patient’s eyesight checked can all contribute to
reducing the risk of our elderly patients having a bad fall
and needing medical attention,” she says.
“Once
the falls assessment has been undertaken, then doctors can
refer onto strength and balance training or other
specialists or programmes that can cater to the patient’s
specific needs,” she concludes.
*ACC injury from
falls data: https://www.acc.co.nz/newsroom/media-resources/injuries-from-falls/
**
https://www.healthnavigator.org.nz/health-a-z/f/falls-and-falls-prevention/
***
Stanmore, E.K., Mavroeidi, A., de Jong, L.D. et al.
The effectiveness and cost-effectiveness of strength and
balance Exergames to reduce falls risk for people aged
55years and older in UK assisted living facilities: a
multi-centre, cluster randomised controlled trial. BMC
Med 17, 49 (2019). https://doi.org/10.1186/s12916-019-1278-9
****
The cohort for this collaborative looked at the percentage
of Māori and Pacific patients aged 65+ and everyone else
aged 75+ years who had a falls risk assessment recorded in
the PMS in the last 12 months. Overall, the 11 collaborative
practices, representing a population of more than 5000
patients 65 plus, increased their completion of falls risk
assessment for this population from 1% to 12% (an 11% total
increase) whereas, the rest of the network 2% to 6% (4%
absolute increase). Any move upward in these figures is
considered
significant.
© Scoop Media
[ad_2]
Source link