In 2020, domestic falls were the leading cause of hospital admissions among unintentional injuries in Scotland. When the Covid19 pandemic hit, many people between the age of 5 and 65 found themselves spending increasing amounts of time at home, as home schooling and remote work were imposed by the circumstances. Did this phenomenon affect the amount of injuries occurring at home? This report aims to explore data about domestic falls and compare data by looking at historical data. Furthermore, I will investigate the performance of different Scottish Health Boards in providing care to patients admitted following a domestic fall injury.
Analysis
During the year 2020, fall injuries were the main cause for hospital admissions among unintentional injuries. Out of 55.728 hospitalizations following unintentional injuries, 35.916 were due to falls. Of these 35.916, 18.113 injuries occurred at home.
Table 1 shows a summary of how different demographics were represented in 2020 statistics. As could be expected, domestic fall injuries seem to affect mostly those 75 and older. However, looking at death rates following a fall injury, the age group of 45-64 years old is more affected.
Our initial hypothesis was that increased time spent at home during the Covid19 pandemic for the 5-64 demographic could lead to an increase in domestic fall injuries. In order to investigate this, we need to have a look at historical data.
Figure 1 below shows time series data for each Age Group, for the time period 2011-2020. As we can see, the age groups that have experienced the most significant increases in admissions between 2019 and 2020 are 5-9-year-olds (+30,11%), 25-44-year-olds (+29,49%) and 45-64-year-olds (+15,35%). All of these age groups are covered in our initial hypothesis. Even though the data and depth of the analysis do not allow us to draw any definitive conclusions, it seems like we are pointing in the right direction.
This reports highlights some initial evidence that the increased time spent at home due to the Covid19 Pandemic has led to an increase in hospital admissions following domestic fall injuries. Of the different age brackets, the brackets of the 5-65 age groups recorded the strongest increase in hospital admissions following domestic fall injuries. A likely explanation for this is that these age brackets include people in schooling and
working age, and that people in this age group have likely spent significantly more time at home during the pandemic than they did before.
Further avenue for explorations include: (1) Investigating why the death rates following fall injuries in 2020 for the age group 45 to 64 are higher than for the 75+ age group; (2) Investigate if the above findings can be confirmed in the 2021 data as well, as the Covid19 pandemic has transformed world dynamics and more people start to study and work from home; (3) To further back the findings and hypothesis of this report, it would be interesting to look at the periods of lock-downs and curfews during 2020 in the different Health Board regions and map these against the data on hospital admissions following domestic fall injuries. However, in order to do so, a new, more granular data set, providing daily or weekly hospital admission records would have to be retrieved and analysed.