JMIR Publications

ABSTRACT

Background:

Falls had been identified as one of the nursing-sensitive indicators for nursing care in the hospitals. With the technological progress, health information system makes it possible for health care professionals to manage patient care better. However, there is a dearth of research on health information systems used to manage inpatient falls.

Objective:

To design and implement a novel hospital-based fall risk management information system (FRMIS) to prevent inpatient falls and improve nursing quality.

Methods:

This implementation was conducted at a large academic medical center in central China. We built a nurse-led multidisciplinary fall prevention team in January 2016. The hospital fall risk management problems were summarized by interviewing fall-related stakeholders, observing fall prevention workflow and post-fall care process, and investigating patients' satisfaction. The FRMIS was developed following an iterative design process, involving collaboration between healthcare professionals, software developers, and system architects. We used process indicators and outcome indicators to evaluate the implementation effect.

Results:

The fall risk management information system includes fall risk assessment platform, fall risk warning platform, fall preventive strategies platform, fall incident reporting and tracking improvement platform. Since the FRMIS implementation, the inpatient falls rate was significantly lower than before implementation (P < 0.05). In addition, the percentage of major fall-related injuries was significantly lower than before implementation. The implementation rate of fall-related process indicators and the reporting rate of high risk of falls were significantly different before and after system implementation (P <0.05).

Conclusions:

The FRMIS provides support to nursing staff in preventing falls among hospitalized patients while facilitating process control for nursing managers.