Key Insights:

• Certain medications and their combinations are recognized as significant contributors to falls among older adults.
• Many over-the-counter medications mixed with other medications can lead to harmful interactions, elevating the risk of falls and other health complications.
• Taking 5 or more medications increases the risk of falls.
• Appropriately and safely reducing resident’s medications also reduces an operator’s medication spend. One operator new to SNF Metrics suggests they will save over $2 Million throughout 2024.
• Leveraging the SNF Metrics medication review reports on a daily basis can help to safely manage the adverse effects of medications as potential contributors to falls within our senior population.

While falls are an inevitable consequence of aging, they remain a significant worry for clinical staff, residents, families, insurers, and lawyers, posing threats of danger and even fatality. Certain medications, alongside combinations of over the counter and prescribed drugs, can heighten the risk of falls. Taking multiple medicines regardless of type increases the risk of falls as well.

So, what steps can senior care operators take? Aside from seniors getting regular exercise, care providers ensuring a safe living environment and effective medication management, it’s imperative that residents and families communicate all medication use to healthcare providers and senior care clinical staff.

In our nursing home settings, staff and physicians may provide or prescribe medications and treatments to a resident without a prior active medication review leaving residents with multiple medications per day. Correlations have been established by various agencies and studies – the higher the number of medications our seniors take, the higher risk of them falling. Even recently-discontinued medications can continue to provide negative impacts and should be monitored. Using the SNF Metrics medication management reports on a daily basis identifies today’s high medication residents so that clinical leadership can review and address as needed.

Conclusion

Falls are the largest risk for our seniors, especially those residing in our nursing homes.  Falls are also a top hospital readmission contributor and cost concern for our senior care operators.  Implementing a daily resident medication review can decrease falls risks and provide significant savings in unnecessary medication expenses.  SNF Metric’s Clinical Dashboard provides actionable medication management analytics that are generated instantly and simple to understand.

About SNF Metrics

We are a technology development practice with absolute attention on improving all aspects of our nursing home partners. Always improving, always amazing our customers – we provide solutions that help staff see opportunities faster and direct them to respond to operational, financial and clinical concerns in minutes. We focus on building proprietary apps that improve our nursing home’s workflows and communications in many aspects, especially risk management.