The Canadian Patient Safety Institute, Canadian Home Care Association and Canadian Foundation for Healthcare Improvement have launched a new pan-Canadian initiative to prevent falls in the home. More than one third of Canadians aged 65 or older experience a fall, with half of these falls resulting in hospitalization taking place in or around the home. Fall-related injuries are the leading cause of injury for seniors across all Canadian provinces and territories and account for over 85 percent of all injury-related hospitalizations. Direct health care costs from falls among seniors are estimated to be $1 billion every year.
Teams from Winnipeg Regional Health Authority (MB), St. Elizabeth Health Care (ON), Canadian Red Cross, VHA Home HealthCare (ON) and Eastern Health (NL) have been accepted into the first wave of the Home Care Safety Falls Prevention Virtual Improvement Collaborative focused on fall prevention and injury reduction. Working with the three partner organizations, the teams from will work from November 2015 to mid-2016 to:
- Identify client outcomes for home care clients at risk for falls;
- Adapt quality improvement approaches to the home care environment;
- Build quality improvement capacity - including measurement capacity - in the home care sector;
- Identify evidence, tools and resources for spread across Canada; and
- Engage patients and families in falls risk assessment and prevention.
The work by the partner organizations and teams in the first wave of the collaborative could lead to an expanded collaborative - open to more organizations that provide home care services - later in 2016.
