The risk of fall-related hospitalisations at entry into permanent residential aged care

Abstract

Background: Entering permanent residential aged care (PRAC) is a vulnerable time for individuals. While falls risk assessment tools exist, these have not leveraged routinely collected and integrated information from the Australian aged and health care sectors. Our study examined individual, system, medication, and health care related factors at PRAC entry that are predictors of fall-related hospitalisations and developed a risk assessment tool using integrated aged and health care data. Methods: A retrospective cohort study was conducted on N=32,316 individuals ≥65 years old who entered a PRAC facility (01/01/2009-31/12/2016). Fall-related hospitalisations within 90 or 365days were the outcomes of interest. Individual, system, medication, and health care-related factors were examined as predictors. Risk prediction models were developed using elastic nets penalised regression and Fine and Gray models. Area under the receiver operating characteristics curve (AUC) assessed model discrimination. Results: 64.2% (N =20,757) of the cohort were women and the median age was 85 years old (interquartile range 80-89). After PRAC entry, 3.7% (N =1209) had a fall-related hospitalisation within 90days and 9.8% (N =3156) within 365days. Twenty variables contributed to fall-related hospitalisation prediction within 90days and the strongest predictors included fracture history (sub-distribution hazard ratio (sHR)=1.87, 95% confdence interval (CI) 1.63-2.15), falls history (sHR=1.41, 95%CI 1.21-2.15), and dementia (sHR=1.39, 95%CI 1.22-1.57). Twenty-seven predictors of fallrelated hospitalisation within 365days were identifed, the strongest predictors included dementia (sHR=1.36, 95%CI 1.24-1.50), history of falls (sHR=1.30, 95%CI 1.20-1.42) and fractures (sHR=1.28, 95%CI 1.15-1.41). The risk prediction models had an AUC of 0.71 (95%CI 0.68-0.74) for fall-related hospitalisations within 90days and 0.64 (95%CI 0.62-0.67) for within 365days. Conclusion: Routinely collected aged and health care data, when integrated at a clear point of action such as entry into PRAC, can identify residents at risk of fall-related hospitalisations, providing an opportunity for better targeting risk mitigation strategies.