Cathy Dykeman and Karyn Lumsden present their falls prevention framework at Ontario's Celebrating Innovations in Health Care Expo.
Credit Valley partners with community to help reduce falls
Framework endorsed by LHIN and will become region-wide
Tuesday May 13, 2008 -- Camille Jensen
Credit Valley Hospital has worked with its community partners to create a comprehensive framework that will address fall prevention at all levels in the continuum of care.

The project brought together service providers from across the region of Mississauga Halton with a goal of discovering the key elements that are required to address fall prevention and to make sure there were linkages across the community.

Karyn Lumsden, director of rehabilitation services at Credit Valley Hospital, a Healthcare Insurance Reciprocal of Canada (HIROC) subscriber, says they wanted to create a more co-ordinated approach to falls prevention.

“How do we make sure as someone moves through the continuum of care, that what they are receiving builds on what they already received in terms of fall prevention, management prevention and intervention,” explains Lumsden.

The region formed a steering committee with representatives from hospitals, long-term care homes and community agencies and completed an environmental scan of 70 agencies in the region to discover best practices and identify gaps.

From the research, the committee developed a falls prevention report and a resource guide available for all service providers in the Mississauga Halton area.

Lumsden says the resource guide, which has best practices from the community and around the world, is generating new discussions and ideas for programming.

The committee also submitted three core recommendations to the Mississauga Halton Local Health Integration Network (LHIN) to receive support to implement the recommendations regionally.

LHINs are regional organizations created by the government of Ontario that are in charge of planning, integrating and funding health-care services across the province.

Upon reviewing the falls prevention recommendations submitted by the committee, the Mississauga Halton LHIN endorsed the project, which will allow the committee to move into the next phase and implement the recommendations.

Lumsden says with the LHIN's recent approval and involvement they will be able to create an effective program to hold agencies accountable for implementing fall prevention across the region.

The research project was also able to form new linkages in the community that Cathy Dykeman, falls prevention project co-ordinator, says will continue in the future.

“This has really built a lot of bridges, because public health isn’t even funded by the same ministry as acute care or long-term care,” says Dykeman. “Other health units are very much looking forward to finding out more –  how it was done and maybe making inroads with their acute care facilities.”

The Mississauga Halton LHIN will be posting their fall prevention report and resource guide online. To learn more, visit their website.

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