After the Fall

A study published in the Journal of the American Geriatrics Society found Medicare and Medicaid have covered about 75 percent of costs for nonfatal older adult falls in the United States, reports U.S. News & World Report . A new initiative in Baltimore, Md., seeks to use hospital data to quickly identify neighborhoods where falls occur most often. Officials will then target interventions to those areas to reduce the fall rate by 20 percent over the next decade. Baltimore City Health Commissioner Dr. Leana Wen says the project could potentially save $14 million in yearly medical costs, "not to mention the lives saved and human impact on families." Baltimore's data surveillance system will be combined with hospitals' provision of fall-related data to Maryland's health information exchange, which hands the data over to the city health department. "We are not sharing protected health information with community partners," insists Baltimore City Health Department CIO Mike Fried. "We are not telling our friends who fell or where they fell. What we are doing is trying to guide the interventions that are happening." Fried says the department will have access to data on falls one week to one month after they occur, helping to prevent more falls in hot spots. "Real-time data allows us to pinpoint areas of concern and to evaluate interventions immediately," Wen notes. "We need data quickly, and we are facing challenges that are really life-and-death. We have to be able to implement in real time."