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Updated: May 16, 2026
Design and Analysis for Fall Detection System Simplification
Published on: April 6, 2020
Identification of patients at risk for falls in an inpatient rehabilitation program
Lisa A Salamon1, Mary Victory, Kathleen Bobay
1Clement J. Zablocki Medical Center, Milwaukee, WI, USA.
Purpose:
To determine if there is a more sensitive method to identify inpatient rehabilitation patients at high risk for falls rather than the Morse fall scale.
Method:
Retrospective analysis of falls occurring during 6-month period in 2009. Age and diagnosis were used to create comparison groups between patients who fell and those who did not. T-tests were used to determine differences between the two groups in FIM scores and Morse fall scores.
Results:
Patients who had stroke as a primary diagnosis were more likely to fall than other patients. Length of stay was greater for patients who fell (p = .008). The positive predictive value of the Morse fall scale for patients who fell was 57%, suggesting that it is not a sensitive predictor of falls in rehabilitation patients. Patients who fell had significantly lower FIM expression scores (p = .02).
