The Economics of Preventing Hospital Falls

A recent article in the January 2015 issue of the Journal of Nursing Administration (JONA), looked at a study which assessed the cost savings associated with implementing nursing approaches to prevent in-hospital falls.

Hospital rating programs often report fall rates, and performance-based payment systems force hospitals to bear the costs of treating patients after falls. Some interventions have been demonstrated as effective for falls prevention. Often net costs are calculated for implementing a falls-prevention program as compared with not making improvements in patient fall rates and the results showed that falls-prevention programs can reduce the cost of treatment. But in many scenarios, the costs of falls-prevention programs were shown to be greater than potential cost savings.

Spetz, J., Brown, Diane S., Aydin, C. (2015). The Economics of Preventing Hospital Falls: Demonstrating ROI Through a Simple Model. Journal of Nursing Administration, 45(1), 50-57.