Welcome to STEADI, Getting Started.
STEADI, which stands for Stopping Elderly Accidents,
Deaths and Injuries,
is an evidence-based older adult fall prevention program designed
for clinicians and their staff.
Clinicians and staff are encouraged
to take the comprehensive STEADI course
that includes more complete descriptions
of screening options, risk factor assessments like gait
and balance testing, and effective fall interventions.
The comprehensive course, STEADI,
Older Adult Fall Prevention also explains how to integrate STEADI
into your clinical practice.
This course, STEADI, Getting Started, presents a quick
and easy way to get started with the STEADI program.
It focuses on three key tasks
that can be completed during a typical office visit.
Following this course, you should be able to,
Describe the burden of falls among older adults Screen
for fall risk using three key questions Identify types
of medications that increase fall risk Explain the four
critical aspects of a medication review
And describe how vitamin D supplements can reduce
fall risk.
Learning these things will enable you
to implement three strategies to prevent falls in older adults.
The goal of this course is simple.
When you see your older adult patients, decrease their risk
of falling by doing three things.
Ask your older patients
about their fall risk using three simple questions,
Have you fallen in the past year?
Do you feel unsteady?
Do you worry about falling?
Review your older patient's current medications and stop,
switch, or reduce the dosage of drugs that increase fall risk.
Recommend vitamin D supplements.
These three actions are your first steps
to making fall prevention a regular part of your practice.
Why should you care about reducing fall risk?
Falls are costly and preventable.
Falls are a huge problem for older adults,
people sixty-five and older.
And, falls are the leading cause of fatal and non-fatal injuries.
The problem of falls is getting worse.
The rate of fall injuries is increasing
and the population is aging, so the number of older people
at risk of falling is also increasing.
So overall, the burden of falls is just getting greater
and greater.
Clinicians can really make a big difference in helping
to reduce patient's fall risk.
There are a number of treatments that can be instituted
that can help to improve our patients' balance
and reduce their risk of falling,
if clinicians will do the screening
that we have recommended and are implementing here locally.
STEADI gives clinicians the tools
to directly impact their patients' fall risk
in the clinical setting as well as also giving them information
about how they can reduce their risk through behavior change.
STEADI has provided an algorithm for us to use in order
to address this epidemic of our patients that fall
and sustain these injuries.
The STEADI program really gave us the outline and the tools
to use to really to begin to address this very major problem.
Falls screening and assessment are recommended
by the American Geriatrics Society.
In addition, fall prevention is a required element
of the Medicare Annual Wellness Visit,
which may include screening and assessment.
Implementing the STEADI program will improve patient outcomes.
STEADI reduces fall risk and early adopters
of STEADI have seen significant improvements for their patients.
STEADI has impacted our practice in a number of ways,
I think that it's helped to enhance teamwork in the clinic
because staff and providers are really working together
to make STEADI a success.
And patients love STEADI, they really feel
that it means their providers
and their team are paying attention to their risk
for falls and giving them some tangible things that they can do
to reduce their risk of falls.
So I think it's made a big difference.
Since implementing STEADI,
we have noticed a very significant decline in fall rate
in the Broome County area.
Prior to going into this,
we had approximately two hundred ninety hospitalizations
for fall related injuries per ten thousand patients
above age sixty-five.
Since implementing this, we've dropped down to
about two hundred twenty
to two hundred thirty falls per ten thousand,
so we've had a very substantial drop in falls.
In addition, at my own clinical site, we went back and looked
at the incidents of vertebral, pelvic and femur fractures prior
to implementation and looked at the rates since implementation
and on our initial analysis,
we found that the fracture rates I mentioned have decreased
in a range of about thirty to forty percent.