Falls in the Medicare population: incidence, associated factors, and impact on health care.

ABSTRACT:

Background and purpose

Falls are a major health problem in the elderly community; however, questions regarding incidence, risk factors, and provider response to falls exist. The purpose of this study was to examine the incidence of falls, associated factors, health care costs, and provider response to falls among Medicare beneficiaries.

Participants

The participants were 12,669 respondents to the Medicare Current Beneficiaries Survey (MCBS).

Methods

Categories of number of falls (none, one, recurrent) and injury type (medically injurious versus not medically injurious) were created from the falls supplement to the MCBS. Means and proportions for the entire Medicare population were estimated using sampling weights. The association between sociodemographic variables and

SUBMITTER: Shumway-Cook A 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC2664994 | biostudies-literature | 2009 Apr

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature