Assessment of a wearable fall prevention system at a veterans health administration hospital

Abstract

Objective In-hospital falls are a significant cause of morbidity and mortality. The Veterans Health Administration (VHA) has designated fall prevention as a major focus area. The objective of this report is to assess the performance of a new sensor-enabled wearable system to prevent patient falls. Methods An integrated sensor-enabled wearable SmartSock system was utilized to prevent falls at the acute care wards of a large VA hospital. Individual patients were only provided the SmartSocks when they were determined to be at high risk of falling. All fall count rates, with and without using the SmartSock, were evaluated and compared for individual patients. SmartSock sensor and electronic health record data were combined to assess the system's performance from February 10, 2021, through October 31, 2021. Results There were 20.7 falls per 1000 ward days of care (WDOC) for those not using the SmartSocks compared to 9.2 falls per 1000 WDOC for patients using the SmartSocks. This represents a reduction of falls by more than half. These findings are further confirmed with a negative binomial regression model, which showed the use of the SmartSock had a statistically significant effect on the rate of falls ( p = 0.03) when length of stay was held constant and demonstrated the odds of fall incident rate of 0.48 (95% CI, 0.24–0.92), that is less than half compared to when patients were not wearing the SmartSock. Conclusion The use of a sensor-enabled wearable SmartSock fall prevention system resulted in a clinically meaningful and statistically significant decrease in falls in the acute care setting.