Establishing a Falls Clinic

Falls Clinic

BENEFITS

• Specialist opinion for patients
• Early, accurate, and efficient diagnosis
• Timely treatment
• Better application of recommended guidelines
• Less duplication and fragmentation of services
• Single source of communication for all stakeholders
• Reduction of total care costs
• Better systems for monitoring and evaluating practice at local, national, and international levels
• High-quality, evidence-based data for research
• Evidence-based innovation in diagnosis, treatments, and healthcare model

BARRIERS

• Underestimation of consequences of falls
• Access for older adults in rural settings
• Lack of awareness of benefit of a falls clinic on quality-of-life
• Low numbers of providers specialized in assessing patients with falls
• Lack of formal fall risk programs
• Wide age range of patients and comorbidities
• Skill sets required in many domains (eg, geriatrics, cardiology, neurology, psychiatry, orthopedics, pharmacology)
• Falls is not a recognized subspecialty
• Reluctance to introduce innovative proposals
• Necessity to engage multiple stakeholders
• Inadequate reimbursement of fall assessment and management
• Fear of increasing costs by developing a new structure (instead of reducing costs)