Is it possible to identify risks for injurious falls in hospitalized patients?

Despite limited evidence that hospital fall prevention programs can decrease them, patient falls have been deemed a preventable complication that will not receive additional reimbursement from the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services. Since only about 1 in 10 falls result in injury, some argue that rather than trying to prevent all falls, a better approach would be to try to prevent injuries from falls. However, this retrospective study was unable to pinpoint variables that identified patients likely to sustain an injury from a hospital fall. An AHRQ WebM&M perspective discusses challenges in and key strategies for preventing falls.