By Healthcare Facilities Today

Hospitals are looking for new methods of preventing patient falls as the garners increased attention, according to an article on NPR.org. Hospital falls are part of a conflict between nurses and hospitals over how to improve the safety of hospitalized patients. They're the subject of congressional discussions and  a new study in the Journal of Patient Safety about medical errors. 

Hospitals in 39 states don't have to report falls. In Washington state, they do. In 2012, falls injured or killed at least 92 hospital patients there.

Falls occur in a small fraction of the many thousands of hospital visits in Washington each year. But safety experts call bad falls "never events." They should never happen inside the protective embrace of a hospital, according to the article

In the article, June Altaras, chief nursing officer at Swedish Medical Center in Seattle said the hospital carefully assesses each patient's risk of falling. High risk patients get special attention, including a bed alarm that goes off when a patient gets up.

"We wanted something very distinctive so you knew exactly what was going on, and you get there very quickly," said Altaras. "It rises above the level of all the other noises in the unit."

Nurses' unions say medical mishaps of all kinds often share a root cause: understaffing. The unions are pushing state and federal legislation to force hospitals to beef up nursing staffs. Hospitals say they can reduce errors without government-mandated hiring.

Read the article or listen to the story.