The Risks and Costs of Falls for Older Adults

“I’ve fallen and I can’t get up.”

The words of Ms. Fletcher from LifeCall’s medical alert commercials, which spotlighted the risks and costs of falls for older adults in the late 1980s, still resonate today. Falls are on the rise, and given the potential cost of injury, it’s a serious matter.

According to the CDC, falls among adults 65 or over caused 36,000 deaths in 2020, making it the leading cause of injury for that demographic. This is somewhat surprising, given that conditions such as dementia receive more attention than falls, but it does not take much imagination to understand why the costs of falls for older adults are so high; for instance, we can all understand that a head injury suffered in a fall can be life-altering.