Treating older patients with chronic health conditions can already be a challenge for medical professionals, but some of these challenges can bite harder if a patient endures preventable trauma, including a fall. That’s why it’s so important to ensure a living space is appropriately fashioned for aging in place.
This is according to James Taylor, a physician and founder of DwellSafe, a company that assesses homes for risks of falling. Sharing his perspectives in a HomeCare Magazine column, Taylor described how debilitating falls can be in the treatment process for older customers.
“A single fall could undo months of progress, leading to prolonged hospital stays or even life-altering complications,” he wrote. “I was shocked to discover just how widespread the issue of falls at home is. Every 15 minutes, an older adult in the U.S. dies from a fall. This isn’t just a statistic — it’s a call to action.”
Citing statistics that illustrate how the U.S. population is growing older at a faster pace, these trends help to highlight gaps in both the U.S. health care system and in the homes that older people live in.
“Falls alone are responsible for $50 billion in health care costs annually — a figure projected to double by 2030,” he wrote. “But these statistics only scratch the surface of a far more pressing issue: the growing disconnect between health care and the places where care increasingly needs to happen — the home.”
Americans are citing their preference to age in place in greater numbers. Fashioning the home to better accommodate the natural limitations that come with aging is essential to combat the needless complications that can arise from falls in the home, Taylor said.
“More care is being delivered at home, and this trend is only accelerating,” he wrote. “Hospitals, insurers and caregivers recognize that the home is becoming an extension of clinical environments. But for this shift to be successful, homes must adapt. They must be designed and modified to accommodate the evolving health care needs of residents, because the boundary between health care facilities and the home is dissolving.”
It will take a multipronged approach from multiple constituencies — including policymakers, health care providers and even homebuilders — to better protect the older population from this kind of harm, Taylor said.