How Sentara Healthcare reduced patient falls and generated nearly $900k in savings


Patient falls that result in injury increase care costs by $13,806 per case and increase patient length of stay by 6.9 days, according to The Joint Commission. With 1 million patient falls occurring per year — 26 percent of which result in some form of injury — falls represent a significant challenge for health systems.

To address this issue, most hospitals assign staff to sit in high fall risk patients' rooms. Sitters have never been proven effective and no matter how plentiful the staffing budget, no hospital can afford one-to-one staffing for every high fall risk patient. Leaders at Norfolk, Va.-based Sentara Healthcare decided to deploy technology to address the issue. And it worked. Since using technology to monitor patients at high-risk of experiencing a fall, fall rates have declined by as high as 80 percent in some units, generating significant cost savings.

Read the white paper to learn more about Sentara Healthcare's successful fall reduction program.