"People are living longer and ... they're trying to be able to stay at home as long as they can, and the prevalence of falls may very well be increasing because of [that]," said Jean Costa, who, as rehabilitation manager for the Rockville-based Adventist Home Health, oversees fall prevention for clients in Anne Arundel, Montgomery, Prince George's, Howard, Calvert, Charles and St. Mary's counties.
Older adults can do several things to make their homes safer, Costa and other experts said.
Some of those things include removing scatter rugs from floors, moving dishes to a lower shelf in kitchen cabinets, using brighter light bulbs, decreasing glare from windows and keeping sharp-edged furniture out of walkways.
Seniors also can make small changes to their wardrobes to help prevent falls.
"I have to tell a lot of my older lady patients who still insist on wearing high heels [that] they need to think about wearing a shoe that grips, that's not slippery, that either has a low heel or no heel at all," Richardson said.
Mikulski wants such one-on-one education to take place on a much larger scale.
As the chairwoman of the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Subcommittee on Retirement and Aging, she has been made aware of the growing problem of falls among seniors.
"We know that baby boomers are getting older, and we know that costs are rising," said Melissa Schwartz, a spokeswoman for the 71-year-old senator.
Mikulski's bill, the Safety of Seniors Act, which the House and the Senate passed this month, will, among other things, establish public education campaigns for older adults, family members and health care providers; require the Secretary of Health and Human Services to evaluate the effect of falls on health care costs and how to reduce them; and support research that identifies older adults at high risk of falling.
Experts say such legislation can help. "I believe," Stone said, "that part of the success of this is to have individual elders and their families, as well as architects, city planners, and people who are designing communities, as well as individual households - to have everybody attuned to falls prevention."
tanika.white@baltsun.com
