VHA’s National Falls Collaborative and Prevention Programs

Excerpt

Falls are a high-volume, high-cost problem in health care. This article presents three successful patient safety fall prevention projects completed within the Department of Veterans Affairs Healthcare Administration (VHA): the National Falls Collaborative Breakthrough Project, the development and deployment of the National Falls Toolkit, and the National Falls Data Collection Project. Each of the projects enrolled VHA medical centers from across the country. These three projects demonstrate VHA’s leadership in evidence-based practice, data and outcomes management, and reliability and sustainability of innovations. The National Fall Collaborative Breakthrough Project involved 40 participating facilities and achieved remarkable results (62 percent reduction from baseline for major injuries). The National Falls Toolkit is a compendium of useful references, resources, presentations, posters, and spreadsheets that were culled from existing research and the Falls Collaborative. The National Falls Data Collection Project occurred over a 2-year period and analyzed multiple indicators of a fall prevention and injury reduction program for 65 medical centers.