Patient Falls Prevention

Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality, National Quality Strategy (NQS), the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS), and The Joint Commission are three agencies that monitor and measures outcomes for health care organizations. All three agencies make an attempt to align their quality measure requirements. All data collected by these agencies is publicly reported, therefore health care organizations are extremely invested in adhering to the measures. In some cases, there are financial penalties for not meeting the measure benchmark (AHRQ, 2016)
One of the quality measures tracked by all three agencies is patient falls. Patient falls is one of the top causes of injuries in health care organizations. The medical costs related to

The major component of the falls prevention program is the nurse’s assessment of the patient’s risk to fall, hourly rounding, and a post fall assessment. All staff who provide care at the bedside are educated in assuring that safety interventions are implemented on all patients. For example, that the call bell is in reach. Many of the tasks for assuring safety interventions can be delated to others on the team making the falls prevention program a team effort. A measure of success for the team would be a reduction in falls per patient days. In 2004, the organization where I work implemented a program called Ruby Slippers that helps to identify patients who are at risk to fall. All patients were assessed for risk to fall, and given red slipper socks if they met the fall risk criteria. There was mandatory training for all employee’s, and the initiative was very success in reducing falls, and still in place today. On the pilot unit there was a 30% reduction in falls after implementing Ruby Slippers (Goncalves & Rychlewicz,