Fall prevention is one of the best ways that home care providers can keep senior clients out of the hospital, but it takes a multifaceted approach.
For Carrie Bianco, the owner and executive director of Always Best Care Senior Services in Torrance, CA, effective fall prevention comes down to training, technology and supervision. Bianco’s agency serves roughly 150 clients with a team of about 300 caregivers. Bianco said that every one of her clients is at risk of experiencing a fall.
“It used to be that the clients we served were between 70 and 85,” she told McKnight’s Home Care Daily Pulse Monday in an interview. “Now they’re 85 to 100, so they’re a lot older. They are living longer and have less health challenges until they hit that 85 to 95 mark. So all of those folks are definitely at fall risk.”
Educating clients and caregivers is the first step to preventing falls. Bianco said that her agency organizes educational events to ensure both staff and community members are up-to-date on fall prevention best practices. The firm also uses a “balance tracker” tool to analyze seniors’ postural sway, which can impact balance.
Always Best Care recently published a list of nine commonly overlooked fall risks present in many home care clients’ homes. Among these were poor lighting, pets and loose rugs. Health issues like medication side effects or dehydration can also heighten seniors’ risk of falling, according to the list. However, Bianco said that most falls are simply caused by a lack of awareness.
“Most of the time [the clients] are just distracted,” Bianco explained. “It’s all the little things. When the caregivers and care managers go out, they do a safety assessment to make sure that we can educate the client,” — or an [adult] child who may be the point of contact — “on what they need to do to make that house safe for that older adult.”
This education is crucial since fall-related injuries tend to have long-lasting health effects, Bianco said. Recuperation and rehabilitation after a fall can be especially challenging for seniors, she noted.
“With a fall, you’re probably going to be in the hospital with something that’s broken or fractured, and when they’re in the hospital, they’re not going to rehab as well as they would if they were at home,” Bianco said. “So the falls, to me, are the most important [thing to prevent] to try to keep the client out of the hospital.”
Fall prevention is garnering attention across the healthcare-at-home continuum. InnovAge, a Program of All-inclusive Care for the Elderly organization, recently disclosed its participation in a study focused on preventing falls by seniors. And the National Council on Aging last week promoted home safety practices to follow during Falls Prevention Awareness Week, Sept. 23 through Sept. 27.
