Falls community admissions

Description

This indicator shows the rate of acute/arranged hospital admissions for injuries due to a fall for people not residing in ARC. The falls that result in the most serious harm may require a hospital admission, especially for older people. It is important to know where these falls occur to guide service development and quality improvement. People who do and do not reside in an ARC facility may require different approaches to reduce the risk of falling.

Measure set

Falls and fractures

Fewer serious harm falls and fractures

Notes about this measure set

Calculating stays

Consecutive events that together make a stay are calculated with a similar methodology to the Manatū Hauora system-level measure Acute Hospital Bed Days.
Events are considered part of the same stay if:

the NHI was the same
the previous event had a transfer end type (DA, DF, DO, DP, DT, DW or ET)
the end date of the previous event was before or within 1 day of the next event
there was an external cause code of a fall (W00–W19) that occurred either on or before the event start date.

All sub-analyses are based on the information recorded in the first event in the stay. Sub-analysis is available using Te Whatu Ora district filters only.

This indicator differs from the falls indicator in the Te Tāhū Hauora Atlas of Healthcare Variation, as it counts all acute/arranged hospital admissions (stays), rather than people with more than one fall only counted once.

Numerator

The number of acute and arranged admissions (stays) in the hospital as a result of a fall for people not resident in ARC at the time of admission.

Denominator

Population projections minus the number of people resident in ARC for the whole quarter.

Denominator detail

Stays included in this measure are those that:

had a public hospital admission due to a fall with injury
started with an acute or arranged event (admission type codes AA, AC, ZA or ZC)
started with an event that had an external cause code of a fall (W00–W19) that occurred either on or before the event start date.

ED short stays (treatment in ED for 3 hours or more) are also included.

Denominator exclusions

Stays excluded from this measure are those that:

had an unknown health district, age or gender
consisted of only non-case-mix events (EXCLU purchase unit); non-case-mix events are otherwise included as long as a case-mix event is within the stay
start with a non-acute event code (ie, excluding falls that clearly occur in hospitals, like those measured in the Te Tāhū Hauora quality and safety markers).

Responsible organisation(s)

Health Quality & Safety Commission | Te Tāhū Hauora

Data sources

National Minimum Dataset (NMDS)

Client claims processing system – Manatū Hauora

National Population Projection - Stats NZ

Measure sets

Health areas

Falls community admissions