Elderly Trauma Often Causes Rapid Decline. How Adult Children Can Help

InnovationHealthcareElderly Trauma Often Causes Rapid Decline. How Adult Children Can HelpByAdaira Landry, MD MEd,Contributor.Forbes contributors publish independent expert analyses and insights. Physician who writes about the rising rates of cancer in young adults.Follow AuthorMay 28, 2026, 09:04am EDTMay 28, 2026, 09:05am EDT--:-- / --:--This voice experience is generated by AI. Learn more.This voice experience is generated by AI. Learn more.Elderly man lying on floor after fallgettyOn May 22nd, Sen. Angus King of Maine held up a $11 bath mat on the Senate floor and stated, “Send out 20 or 30 million of these and that $100 million cost of falls would fall significantly.” His proposal is for Medicare to cover basic bathroom safety equipment, such as grab bars and nonslip mats, arguing that the math is straightforward: prevention costs far less than hospitalizations and rehabilitation. As of today, Medicare covers the cost of a broken hip, but not the equipment that might have prevented injury.The senator’s instinct reflects a broader and underappreciated reality I see far too often in the emergency department. Trauma in our elderly population is not simply an isolated accident – it is often the smoke signal that divides a life into “before the fall” and “after the fall.”How Serious are Fall-Related Injuries in the ElderlyDr. Kalpana Shankar© All Rights Reserved Mainframe Photographics Inc 2022“Hip fractures are the injury that most families worry about, and the mortality data is sobering,” says Dr. Kalpana Shankar, Assistant Professor or Emergency Medicine at Harvard Medical School and Brigham and Women’s Hospital. “Families often walk into the ED thinking they’re dealing with a broken bone,” says Shankar. “We’re sometimes dealing with the beginning of the end.” One-year mortality after hip fracture in older adults is approximately 22%, and climbs substantially when dementia or frailty is already present. But hip fractures are not the only dangerous injury in the e...