Falls (health and wellbeing needs in South Tyneside)

For the latest data and trends related to falls in South Tyneside, see OHID Fingertips ^[23]:

Fingertips: Local Authority Health Profiles and Fingertips: Public Health Profiles.

• South Tyneside currently has 30,593 people or 20.3% of its population that is over age 65.
• If one in three people over the age of 65 will fall in one year, that is 10,198 people who will fall this year.
• Around 1,000 of those will require medical attention.

The Community Falls Service is a shared service with Sunderland. One full-time Band 7 and one part-time Band 3 employees are dedicated to South Tyneside. Services provided in 2019 included:

• Screening 3084 referrals and A&E visitors.
• Providing assessments to 502 individuals in the outpatient clinic and in their place of residence.
• Providing 73 follow-up visits in the community.
• This does not take into account unreported falls by people who may not seek help, who are treated by other providers and not referred, or who decline a referral.

The South Tyneside District Hospital audited their rate of inpatient falls and participated in the National Audit of Inpatient Falls. The most recently published figures for South Tyneside are below. South Tyneside NHS Foundation Trust merged with Sunderland Community Hospitals on 01/04/2019. Figures are now reported in the aggregate making the scrutiny of inpatient falls exclusive to South Tyneside more challenging. The merged Trusts have created a Falls Strategy Group and Falls Review Panel to oversee the problem of falls on the Trusts' properties.

• The national average rate of falls for inpatients is 6.63 per 1000 bed days.
• The Northeast average rate of falls for inpatients was 8.09 per 1000 bed days.
• These averages are from the last NAIF publication in 2019
• The South Tyneside District Hospital's average rate of falls was 10.66 per 1000 bed days. For the period November 2020 through October 2021 that rate was 8.52. It should be noted that the Trust methodology for counting falls changed within that period. It does not take into account "unpreventable accidental falls".