Integrated Provincial Falls Prevention Framework & Toolkit
Stay Up, Keep Up!
Falls reduce quality of life for our seniors, impacting their mobility, health and independence.
Falls result in:
- 50% of injury-related hospitalizations were due to falls;
- >90% of all hip fractures are due to falls;
- 55 per 1,000 seniors visited the ED due to a fall; and
- 13 per 1,000 seniors were hospitalized due to a fall.
Falls are a leading cause of injury and death among seniors. And yet, most falls are avoidable with proper education, awareness, screening, assessment, intervention and prevention.
To address this, Ontario’s Local Health Integration Networks (LHINs) and Public Health Units partnered to develop an Integrated Provincial Falls Prevention Framework & Toolkit to improve quality of life for Ontario seniors aged 65 years and over, and to lessen the impact of falls on the health care system by reducing the number and impact of falls.
This project aligns with government and LHIN priorities to reduce Alternate Level of Care and Emergency Department wait times as well as the province’s Excellent Care for All Act and public health’s Injury Prevention and Healthy Communities strategies.
Many organizations are already doing great work to reduce falls among seniors. This framework and toolkit pulls together leading practices, programs and resources to create a coordinated, consistent approach to measure the effectiveness of falls prevention interventions across the province.
Even though a LHIN-wide falls prevention program already exists in the Waterloo Wellington LHIN, we – along with our health service providers and partners - will be using the framework and toolkit to strengthen our program and ensure consistency is a chieved where required.
We have shared the Integrated Provincial Falls Prevention Framework & Toolkit with our stakeholders and will be working with them to implement the key actions outlined in this report.