Scope

This report presents information on the 133,000 injury cases due to falls that resulted in hospitalisation and the 5,000 cases due to falls that resulted in death among those aged 65 and over during the period 1 July 2019 to 30 June 2020. Deaths that occurred during hospitalisation may be counted in both the hospitalisations and deaths data.

Hospitalisations data include cases where a person was admitted to hospital with a principal diagnosis of injury and where the leading cause of injury was a fall. Cases where a patient was transferred between hospitals or where a patient’s care type changed while in hospital were only counted once.

While multiple external causes may be recorded for a hospitalisation, the records included in this report are generally those for which a fall was the first-listed external cause code in the data record.

This report does not include information on falls that did not result in hospitalisation or death. For each fall hospitalisation or death there are many more cases that are treated by emergency departments, general practitioners, allied health professionals or outpatient clinics.

In addition to the 132,933 hospitalised falls in-scope for this report (where Fall was the first-listed external cause in the hospital record), there were 837 other records where Fall was listed as an additional external cause of injury but was not the first-listed external cause, which is usually the primary cause of injury. These were not included in the scope of this report.

For more detailed information on the methodology used in this report, see Technical notes.