Season 3 Episode 4: Preventing Falls in Long Term Care with Real-Time Data

Anthony Pero

Welcome everyone to the Better Living Through Data podcast! On today's episode, we're representing Falls Prevention Awareness Week happening right now, September 21-25. This is an important observation week as falls among older adults continue to be a public health concern.

Andie Morataya

That's right Anthony. It's important to address this major factor within the aging population.

Anthony Pero

When you look into the actual electronic health records across long term care, the, the raw numbers are just staggering. We are looking at 1,854,741 residents historically who have had documented fall events. And right now, at this very moment, there are 155,520 currently active residents with documented fall events in the system.

Andie Morataya

Wait, over 155,000 active residents right now? That is not just a statistic, Anthony, that is a massive, ongoing clinical emergency happening in real time across facilities.

Anthony Pero

It really is. And, you know, people often talk about falls as if they are just an inevitable part of aging, like, oh, well, getting older means you fall. But when you add the wider health data to this, the picture gets so much more severe. CDC data shows over 3 million emergency department visits every single year for older adult falls, and nearly 319,000 annual hospitalizations just for hip fractures.

Andie Morataya

That 319,000 hip fracture number is devastating because a hip fracture in an 80 year old resident is so rarely just a broken bone. It triggers this immediate, rapid functional decline. But what drives me crazy in standard facility operations is how we track this. Traditional incident logs only capture what happens after a resident is already on the floor. They completely miss the pre fall signals, like subtle changes in gait or stride velocity that happen days before.

Anthony Pero

Right, because an incident report is literally filled out after the event has already occurred.

Andie Morataya

Exactly. And then you have the psychological impact, which standard forms never measure. A resident falls, they do not get seriously hurt physically, but they develop this profound fear of falling again. So what do they do? They stop walking to the dining hall. They stop participating in activities. Their muscles atrophy, their balance gets worse, and research from the CDC shows that falling once doubles your chances of falling again.

Anthony Pero

Falling once doubles your chances of falling again. That fear creates a literal self fulfilling loop. From a marketing and communications perspective, it makes me think about how we approach events like Falls Prevention Awareness Week. So often, organizations treat these as surface level awareness days, put up a poster, share a flyer, check the box. But if we are looking at 155,520 active residents at risk today, we have to bridge that gap between promotional awareness and actual daily operational reality in the building.

Andie Morataya

And bridging that gap requires us to decode what is actually happening clinically, because a fall is almost never caused by just one thing. It is a multi factorial web. You have longitudinal electronic health records tracking physical mobility scores alongside polypharmacy. For example, if a resident is on a sedative for sleep, plus a blood pressure medication that causes orthostatic hypotension, plus a blood thinner, their risk profile explodes.

Anthony Pero

So if someone gets prescribed a new sleeping aid or a sedative, that mobility score from yesterday might not reflect their actual risk tonight when they try to get up to use the bathroom.

Andie Morataya

Yes! That is precisely where continuous risk assessment comes in. When you combine real time health data with validated community screening tools like the National Council on Aging, or NCOA, Falls Free CheckUp, you move from an annual campaign mindset to active risk stratification every single day.

Anthony Pero

I love that reframing. Taking the NCOA toolkits and campaign assets that raise awareness, but anchoring them directly into the real time workflow so care teams actually see the risk scores updating live.

Andie Morataya

And it goes way beyond the front line nursing staff, too.

Anthony Pero

That's true! In my work with biopharma and payer provider networks, we use real world evidence from these long term care records to look at non sedating therapeutic options. We can evaluate actual prescribing patterns across thousands of beds to see which drug combinations correlate with high fall rates, and then design targeted intervention pathways to optimize those prescriptions before a resident ever stumbles.

Andie Morataya

That is huge. Because if a drug design or a dosage tweak can prevent even a fraction of those 3 million emergency room visits, you are saving lives and preserving quality of life.

Anthony Pero

It comes down to protecting resident dignity. People want to stay mobile and independent. Passive daily data tracking in long term care allows us to safeguard that independence without locking people in chairs out of fear. It prevents avoidable hospital transfers and keeps residents safe in their home environment.

Andie Morataya

Wow that reframe from reactive logging to proactive infrastructure really changes everything. Thanks for walking through the data today, Anthony.

Anthony Pero

Always a pleasure, Andie. If you would like to learn more about our data, visit the link in today’s podcast description! Thanks for joining us on the Better Living Through Data podcast!