Examining Falls Rates Across Health Care Settings for Older Adults in Canada: Implications for Population-Level Estimates of Risk

Falls remain a significant public health concern given both the person-level and system-level effects of experiencing a fall, namely decreased function, decreased intrinsic capacity, social isolation, and increased health care utilization. The World Health Organization has prioritized falls as a health outcome indicator in evaluating the impact of policy, strategy, and programming. The objective was to establish cross-sectoral fall rates across health care sectors in Canada and identify key risk factors as candidate risk adjustment variables for a falls quality indicator.