September is Fall Prevention Month
Educate Your Clients
Get the Insurance Protection They Need
For the elderly falls are serious business. Falls are the 7th leading cause of death in the Senior Market. Falls are the leading cause of accidental death for elderly Americans, with 1 in 4 Americans over 65 having a fall each year. These are startling statistics. So let’s break this down and look at some numbers from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and Merck & Co:
- Every 11 seconds, an older adult is treated in the emergency room for a fall resulting in more than 2.8 million injuries and over 800,000 hospitalizations annually.
- Falls reportedly contribute to over 40% of nursing home admissions.
- 50% of nursing home residents fall.
- Medical costs to Medicare alone for fall injuries were $31 billion in 2015.
- The financial toll for older adult falls is expected to increase as the population ages and may reach $67.7 billion by 2020.
With an elderly death occurring every 19 minutes from a fall, resulting in more than 27,000 deaths, plans to keep seniors healthy are vital.
Over half of the elderly segment (58%) is concerned with losing self-reliance or losing physical agility, and rightly so. Risk of multiple falls is prevalent because at least 50% of seniors do not recover to their previous level of mobility. In addition, when a senior citizen falls, about half cannot get up without help. Their only recourse is to remain on the floor, and the average duration of time on the floor is over 2 hours after the fall. This increases the risk of dehydration, pressure ulcers, rhabdomyolysis, hypothermia, and pneumonia.
Falls are not limited to a senior living at home or in nursing homes. 30 to 40% of elderly people in the community fall; roughly 1 in 4 retailers are not equipped with benches to sit down (29%), ample handicapped parking (25%), handicapped bathrooms (23%), easy-to-reach shelving (23%) or handicapped ramps and doors (22%).
Personal savings and retirement investments will be the primary source of retirement income for 46% of the population. Keeping seniors financially healthy is as important as keeping them physically fit.
Now is a great time to educate your clients as their trusted advisor.
We’d love the opportunity to work with you here at National Contracting Center. We offer many great ancillary product options to help with Fall Protection: Standard Home Health Care, GTL Short Term Home Healthcare and New Era Short Term Medical, as examples. You can also check out this post on the importance of offering Home Health Care plans to your clients. If you have any questions or if there’s anything that we can help you with, feel free to give us a call at 800-695-0280!
