Fall Injury Statistics

The commercials run throughout the day showing the plight of an older person who has fallen at home. Each year millions of Americans over the age of 65 fall at home, with the incidents causing a wide variety of injuries. The older we get, the more likely that we lose our sense of balance, which can trigger the start of a fall that produces serious injuries. For the millions of falls experienced by older Americans, an equal number of younger Americans fall at work or a public venue like a stadium or convenience store.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) is the federal agency responsible for gathering data that forms the reports presenting fall injury statistics.

According to the CDC, 20 percent of all falls result in a serious injury, such as brain trauma or compound fractured bones. Each year, more than 800,000 fall victims are hospitalized because of a severe fall injury. Around 95 percent of all hip fracture cases result from a fall, whether the fall is from an elevated height or a victim slipped and fell on a slick surface. Falls represent the most common cause of traumatic brain injuries (TBI), which can leave a patient unable to perform basic daily tasks like cleaning and cooking.

Healthcare costs for treating and rehabilitating the injuries generated by falls exceed an average of $50 billion each year in the United States. Falls account for more than eight million emergency room visits each year, which represents the most common reason why patients seek emergency medical care. The more than one million slip and fall-related emergency room visits account for 12 percent of all emergency room visits caused by falls. Although slip and fall incidents are not the leading cause of work-related fatalities, they are the most common reason why workers miss days of work. According to the Consumer Product Safety Commission (CPSC), loose flooring contributes to more than two million falls each year at both workplaces and public venues.

Fall injury statistics reveal plenty of helpful information for the attorneys at Morgan and Morgan. The most revealing data gleaned from fall injury statistics are the most common types of injuries. Before you hire an attorney to represent you for a workers’ compensation or personal injury, make sure the litigator under consideration understands the medical implications of the most common types of fall injuries.

Fractured Bone

Falling to the ground triggers one common reaction among victims: Stick out one or both arms to brace against the impact of falling to the floor or ground. Although using one or both arms to absorb the impact of a fall can prevent the development of issues like brain trauma, it also increases the chances of a fall victim fracturing an arm, wrist, and/or elbow. If a victim cannot use an arm to brace for a fall, then other areas of the body such as the hips and collarbone are highly vulnerable to sustaining fractures.

The severity of a fractured bone ranges from a minor break to a compound fracture that takes months to heal.

Brain Trauma

Some falls take victims by surprise enough to prevent them from somehow absorbing the impact of falling to the floor or ground. The result places the head in harm’s way of striking the floor or ground with significant force. Brain trauma represents one of the most common types of fall injuries, especially in cases that involve falling from an elevated height. Brain trauma includes a range of severity, from sustaining a minor concussion to requiring immediate invasive surgery in order to control swelling of the brain.

The costs of diagnosing, treating, and rehabilitating a brain trauma injury can run into tens of thousands of dollars.

Spinal Cord Damage

Not all fall accidents result in a victim landing on an arm or another part of the body. According to the fall injury statistics amassed by the CDC, many fall accidents result in a victim landing in a sitting position. This type of fall accident places an incredible amount of pressure on the spinal cord. If the pressure exceeds what the spinal cord can endure, a victim can sustain a wide variety of spinal cord injuries that make it impossible for the victim to walk.

The most common type of spinal cord damage caused by a fall is rupturing one or more discs. Spinal cord discs provide a cushion that absorbs strong impacts.

If you fell at work and the fall caused you to sustain one or more injuries, filing a workers’ compensation claim is the legal action you must take to recover financial losses. On the other hand, if negligence played a role in causing you to fall at a public venue, you might have enough persuasive physical evidence to file a civil lawsuit that seeks monetary damages.

One of the most important legal responsibilities of a personal injury attorney is to ensure clients file civil lawsuits before the expiration of the statute of limitations. Each state has set a deadline for filing a personal injury lawsuit, with most states establishing a deadline between two and four years. However, you might live in a state that allows as long as six years or as short as one year to take legal action for recovering your financial losses. The clock typically starts ticking on the deadline for filing a personal injury lawsuit on the day when a fall caused you to sustain one or more injuries. However, state law might permit an exception to the rule if you developed delayed symptoms from one or more injuries. For example, many types of concussions do not produce symptoms until a couple of days after a victim sustains a traumatic brain injury.

Whether you have one year or six years to file a personal injury lawsuit, you should act with a sense of urgency for two important reasons. First, your lawyer wants to interview witnesses as close as possible to the date of the fall incident. Witness accounts are more reliable the closer they are given to the date of a personal injury accident. Second, you are responsible for taking care of all the debts associated with your case. Healthcare providers do not wait for favorable legal judgments to receive payments from patients. Filing a civil lawsuit close to the date of a fall incident can help you recover faster from financial losses.

If you do not file a personal injury lawsuit before the expiration of the statute of limitations, you can expect the court clerk processing your case to remove it from the judicial docket.

Whether you sustained injuries from a fall at work or a public venue like a grocery store, you should consider the same professional criteria when searching for the best attorney.

Experience should be an important criterion, but only for attorneys that demonstrate a proven record of success. At Morgan and Morgan, our experience spans more than 30 years and it includes an impressive record of getting our clients the compensation that they deserve. The attorney that you hire should be a responsive communicator. You should receive responses to questions within 24 hours after you send an email or text message. Your attorney should represent you from the day of the free case evaluation to the day when your case gets resolved. Many lawyers meet with clients for free consultations only to disappear for the remainder of a case.

One credible indicator of the reputation of an attorney comes from the online reviews posted by former clients on sites such as Yelp and Google. We encourage you to read the positive reviews left by our clients to gain insight into our professionalism and legal expertise. To learn more about the types of legal support provided by Morgan and Morgan, schedule a free case evaluation today to discuss your personal injury case.