Aspirus Medford Hospital completed a quality improvement project that focused on reducing the overall fall and fall with injury rates through the calendar year of 2024. In the first six months of 2024, there had been a notable increase in fall events that prompted a call to action for a performance improvement plan to address this trend.

Through the work of a multidisciplinary team, there were key improvement strategies deployed that included hardwiring bedside shift report and purposeful hourly rounding to be inclusive of safety measures around fall prevention interventions. Additional strategies that were deployed in this project included the upgrade of patient beds with alarms for all patient rooms, optimization of the tele-sitter program for high risk patients and promoting staff awareness and engagement in fall prevention efforts through visual management and department huddles to celebrate successes. Through the work of the multidisciplinary team, Aspirus Medford Hospital decreased their overall fall rate from 2.17 (Jan 2024-June 2024) to 0.58 (July 2024-Nov 2024). There was also a decrease in the fall with injury rate from 0.43 (Jan 2024-June 2024) to a fall with injury rate of 0 (July 2024-Nov 2024).

This great work has created a strong foundation that has helped with sustainability and lessons learned for future performance improvement work.