Hospital acquired falls causing a fracture or head injury

With increasing age or frailty, our risk of a fall increases.

In hospitals, we aim to keep you safe from falls by doing falls risk assessments.

Despite our robust efforts, falls may still happen, and we review and report them in order to prevent them occurring in the future.

Falls that occur in hospitals and cause a fracture or head injury are reported nationally. The technical term for these is ‘hospital-acquired falls with fracture or intracranial injury’. The data below shows the number of falls that resulted in either a fracture or head injury.

The data also shows the number of falls compared to the amount of care provided to all patients who came to hospital. This is presented as a rate of falls per 10,000 patient days. More information about patient days is provided below.

This data shows the number and rate of falls across all patients admitted to public hospitals.

This data indicates that despite the age and frailty of our patients, with the preventive measures we have put in place, we have a low rate of falls resulting in fractures or head injuries.

We want to keep our patients safe. You can help us by giving your healthcare professional as much information as possible during your falls risk assessment. This is usually done when you are first admitted to hospital.

About the data

This data shows the number of falls that occurred in a hospital and resulted in a fracture or head injury.

The data includes results for all patients who were admitted to a public hospital, for any duration and any reason.

Data is presented as numbers and as a rate. To calculate the rate, we have divided the total number of patient days of care provided across public hospitals in a given financial year by the total number of falls that resulted in a fracture or head injury. Patient days are calculated as the total number of days that a patient was in the hospital until they were discharged. This means that the total number of patient days does not increase until the patient is discharged.