Fall prevention: ‘falling is an epidemic you don’t hear about’

In early October, much attention was focused on “”Fall Prevention Week 2022. The CBS announced around that time that the number of people who died in 2021 as a result of a fall doubled compared to ten years ago. Especially among people receiving Wlz care in an institution, the number of deaths from accidental falls increased. They represent 60% of the total number.

The increase in falls is also reflected in the number of hospitalizations. Since 2019, every four minutes a person over 65 ends up in the emergency room after a fall incident. That’s more than 100,000 per year. These alarming numbers, are causing more and more healthcare professionals to work to raise awareness of fall prevention. Marcel Levi, chairman of the board of directors of the Dutch Organization for Scientific Research (NWO), describes the above trend as “”the epidemic you don’t hear about“” for good reason.

Increasing pressure on care capacity and higher costs

With the aging population in mind, the number of fall incidents will increase every year from now on if nothing will be done against it. Besides the fact that a fall incident is an unpleasant experience for the person in question, the increase in its number will put even more pressure on care capacity. Next to that the cost of healthcare will increase. Research by the Dutch Journal of Geriatric Physical Therapy shows that a fall incident without injury results in an average of five hours of additional workload. That’s converted to €193. The worse the injury, that workload increases to more than 280 hours (+€10,000).

Fall prevention: how to tackle it?

In order to reduce the number of fall incidents and minimize injuries resulting from falls, increasing attention is being paid to fall prevention recent years.
But reducing fall incidents is easier said than done. After all, it is a combination of several factors that makes the number of fall incidents increase so sharply in recent years. Consider, for example, the increasing aging population and the scarcity of well-trained healthcare personnel. In addition, proper awareness among the target group, consisting of the elderly, is often difficult to achieve.

To reduce the number of fall incidents, timely identification of fall risks is important. This prevents a lot of suffering and loss of quality of life in clients. By identifying the fall risks present, it is possible to offer appropriate advice to patients or clients. ‘Care for Better’ has developed a special program for this that can be applied to both clients living at home and clients living in nursing homes. More information can be found at: https://www.zorgvoorbeter.nl/valpreventie-ouderen/risico-vallen.

Automatic fall detection for nursing homes

Zoals gezegd, vinden de meeste valincidenten plaats binnen verzorgingstehuizen. Het gaat hierbij om ruim 80.000 valbewegingen per jaar. Dat betekent dat veel ouderen vroeg of laat te maken krijgen met een valincident met regelmatig vervelende gevolgen. Het vraagt daarnaast enorm veel capaciteit van het zorgpersoneel dat daar actief is. Capaciteit die steeds verder onder druk komt te staan. Om voor deze situatie een oplossing te vinden, ontwikkelde VAIBS samen met onze partner Gold IP de module VAIBS Care Valdetectie.

VAIBS Care Fall Detection, in combination with Gold IP’s smart sensor, is capable of recognizing and detecting fallen persons or fall hazard situations. When such a situation occurs, an alarm will immediately be generated for the care worker who in turn can act appropriately.

Using VAIBS Care Fall Detection in conjunction with Gold IP’s smart sensor provides several benefits:

• With VAIBS Care Fall Detection it’s possible to monitor clients with a higher risk of falling. If they enter a hazardous situation, or when they actually fall, care personnel will be alerted to prevend injuries as much as possible. Monitoring is totally GPR-proof.
• This solutions prevents clients from laying on the ground for hours after falling.
• Traditional control rounds at night will be shortened drastically. Because of this, workload will be decreased.
• Clients will not be disturbed during the night. They will enjoy a full night of sleep.
• Saved hours during shifts can be used for onther tasks.
• In the end it will be possible to plan work shifts more efficient. This will save money.

Meer weten over de combinatie tussen VAIBS Care Valdetectie en de slimme sensor van Gold IP? Bezoek dan www.slimme-sensor.nl, bekijk onderstaande video of bezoek www.vaibs.com/vaibs-care.