Measures to prevent elderly people in Warwickshire being hospitalised by falls are starting to work

Measures to prevent Warwickshire’s elderly being hospitalised by falls are starting to work – despite admissions being higher than target.

A report to the county’s Health and Wellbeing Board this week showed that a rate of 548 per 100,000 of the population of people aged 65 or over per had been the subject of an emergency hospital admission due to falls in the first quarter of 2023-24 – April to June this year.

New targets linked to fall prevention initiatives such as timed up-and-go assessments, strength and balance exercise videos and urgent response for falls had hoped to bring that number to within 466, meaning the region is 17.5 per cent behind the curve.

However, Rachel Briden, integrated partnership manager at Warwickshire County Council, explained that current trends are encouraging.

“We are over target on this new metric but when you look at the detail, there is a reduction of around 15 per cent compared with this time last year,” she told the board.

“Some of the interventions we have been doing around falls and fall prevention in the emergency community response are starting to come through now which is really good to see.”

Older data on reablement programmes, measuring how many over-65s have to be readmitted to hospital having been discharged to a rehabilitation service, shows the authority to be performing slightly above target with 94.4 per cent of patients not having to return to an acute setting.

There were 1,103 avoidable hospital admissions – described in the report as “unplanned hospitalisations for chronic ambulatory care sensitive conditions” – between April and June, but that was within the target of no more than 1,213.

It is a reduction of 109 such admissions, or nine per cent, compared with the same time last year, although the report notes “this follows a similar trend to the same period last year where performance was better than target in quarters one and two before increasing during the second half of the year”.