It’s a sad fact in hospital life, but patients (many of them seniors) have falls.
They are painful and frightening for patients (sometimes fatal), a worry for family members and caregivers.
While not providing specific numbers at the latest Sault Area Hospital (SAH) board of directors meeting, Jim McLean, SAH Quality and Services Committee chair, said “we have had a slight uptick (in falls among patients), year over year.”
“Falls are the most common critical incident and a lot of work is going on, around understanding that core patient group (seniors) that seems to contribute most often to this metric,” McLean said, delivering a report to the board dedicated to the topic of enhancing patient safety and handling critical incidents.
“There are a number of training and educational approaches to the geriatric side. We continue to keep the lens on falls in particular and continue to work to achieve the utopian dream of no falls, ever. We keep working on it.”
“Falls continue to be the most common critical patient incident reported at SAH,” wrote Brandy Sharp Young, SAH spokesperson in an email to SooToday.
“SAH is focused on falls prevention strategies across the hospital including assessment of all patients for falls risk, the implementation of universal fall precautions as part of standards of care, post fall assessments, and communicating a patient’s falls risk to members of the care team.”
Sharp Young said the hospital has also supported the Post Falls Pathway Project in the SAH Emergency Department (ED), which is trying to improve the care and outcomes of older adults when presenting to the ED after a fall in the community.
“The development of the pathway is critical to ensuring the best possible outcomes for older adults. SAH, in collaboration with the Algoma Ontario Health Team, has expanded the scope of the pathway project to extend this work to primary care,” Sharp Young wrote.
In other news from the board meeting, held virtually Monday, falls of a financial nature at the hospital were reported.
“To no surprise to anyone, we continue to show a deficit of approximately $9.3 million dollars which is causing an unfavourable budget variance of $9.8 million. $8 million of that is attributed to COVID,” said Trevor Rachkowski, SAH Resources Committee chair, addressing the board.
“(There is) $10.5 million in lost revenue...all in all, I think we’re not unfamiliar with the fact that the likelihood of an unbalanced budget this year is very high,” Rachkowski said.
When COVID struck last March, SAH temporarily stopped doing a number of medical procedures before resuming those procedures later in 2020.
That, along with visitor restrictions and a temporary suspension of parking fees and many of the hospital’s employees working from home, resulted in SAH revenues taking a hit.
“Based on January results, SAH is anticipating an overall deficit of approximately $14 million,” wrote Brandy Sharp Young, SAH spokesperson in a follow up email.
“As of January, SAH’s revenue falls short of budgeted revenues by approximately $9 million, of which $5 million is as a result of the cancellation of procedures which are funded based on volumes, and $4 million related to non-ministry funded revenue.”
“It is important to note that this amount can fluctuate based on additional Ministry funding that may occur in the coming months,” Sharp Young wrote.
It is not known how much Ministry funding SAH (along with all other hospitals suffering financial loss due to COVID) will receive.
When asked if SAH may increase parking fees to make up for lost revenue, or if staff and program cuts may be coming to address the hospital’s financial troubles, Sharp Young wrote “the Ministry of Health has been adamant from the beginning of the pandemic that hospitals continue providing care.”
“The Ministry also requested hospitals refrain from any planned cost-cutting exercises. At this time, SAH is not planning any cost-cutting measures. We remain focused on providing safe, quality care."