Performance of the Hendrich Fall Risk Model II in Patients Discharged from Rehabilitation Wards. A Preliminary Study of Predictive Ability

Background: Falls are a dangerous adverse event in patients discharged from rehabilitation units, with the risk of falling being higher in the first weeks after discharge. In this study, we assessed the predictive performance of the Hendrich Fall Risk Model II tool (HIIFRM) when administered before discharging patients to their home from rehabilitative units in orthopedic (OR), neurologic (NR) and pulmonary (PR) rehabilitation wards. (2) Methods: Over a 6-month period, all adult patients who returned home after discharge were assessed by HIIFRM. At six months from discharge the occurrence of falls was obtained by performing a structured survey. The HIIFRM predictive performance was determined by the area under the ROC curve (AUC), sensitivity (Se) and specificity (Sp) for the whole sample and split by ward. (3) Results: 85 of 141 discharged patients were living at home and agreed to take part in the survey. Of these, 19 subjects fell, 6 suffered fractures or head traumas and 5 were hospitalized. The AUC was 0.809 (95% CI: 0.656–0.963), Se was 0.67 (0.30–0.93) and Sp was 0.79 (0.63–0.90) for OR patients. (4) Conclusions: Our preliminary results support the use of HIIFRM as a tool to be administered to OR patients at discharge and provides data for the design of a large study of predictive ability