~ submitted by P. Hannah Davis

Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality Announcements

Falls Send More than Two Million Seniors to Hospital Emergency Departments

Hospital emergency departments (EDs) treated more than 2 million seniors for broken bones, head wounds, cuts and other injuries caused by falls in 2006 at a cost to hospitals of approximately $7 billion for emergency and subsequent inpatient care, according to a recent report from the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality.  Falls are the leading cause of fatal and nonfatal injuries among Americans aged 65 and older. The cost for medical treatment, which is paid mainly by Medicare, is expected to increase as the number of older Americans grows.

The federal agency's analysis of hospital emergency department data for patients age 65 and older treated for injuries caused by falls shows that:

• One in 10 ED visits by seniors were for injuries related to falls, and the number of ED visits related to injurious falls increases with age: 1 in 10 men and 1 in 7 women older than 85 have an emergency department visit for an injurious fall.

• Of the seniors who went to the emergency department due to falls, 41 percent had fractures, primarily of an upper extremity or a hip. Other common injuries resulting from falls included open wounds (21 percent of visits), sprains and strains (10 percent), injuries to internal organs (5 percent), and joint dislocations (1.5 percent).

• About 63 percent of the patients who had injuries to an internal organ and 51 percent of people with fractures were hospitalized.

• About 41 percent of patients with fractures and 33 percent of those who sustained internal organ injuries were transferred to a nursing home or other type of long-term care facility.

These findings are based on data described in HCUP Statistical Brief #80: Emergency Department Visits for Injurious Falls Among the Elderly, 2006. The report uses statistics from the 2006 Nationwide Emergency Department Sample, a new AHRQ database that is nationally representative of emergency department visits in all non-federal hospitals. The Nationwide Emergency Department Sample contains 26 million records from emergency department visits from approximately 1,000 community hospitals nationwide. This represents 20 percent of all U.S. hospital emergency departments.