Falls

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Falls are Australia’s number one cause of injury hospitalisation and death, representing 42% of injury hospitalisations and 40% of injury deaths.

Falls requiring hospitalisation are more common in older people and most likely to occur in the home.

Over half of injury hospitalisations from falls involve a fracture.

Falls resulted in:

This page summarises data on unintentional falls. Intentional injuries and deaths are included under Assault and homicide or Self-harm and suicide.

Causes of hospitalisation

In 2020–21:

• Over half of all falls leading to hospitalisation happened on a single-level surface (for example, by slipping or due to a collision)
• 7% of falls leading to hospitalisation involved stairs or steps (Table 1).

Notes

1. Rates are crude per 100,000 population.
2. Percentages may not total 100 due to rounding.
3. Codes in brackets refer to the ICD-10-AM (11th edition) external cause codes (ACCD 2019).

Source: AIHW National Hospital Morbidity Database.

For more detail, see Data tables B11–12.

Causes of death

It is often not possible to determine the exact type of fall which contributed to a death. In 2019–20, the type of fall was not specified in 87% of injury-related deaths. For deaths where the type of fall was specified, slipping or tripping on the same level was the most commonly reported cause.

Caution should be used when interpreting this data due to the large proportion of unspecified falls (Table 2).

Notes

1. Rates are crude per 100,000 population. 
2. Percentages may not total 100 due to rounding.
3. Codes in brackets refer to the ICD-10 external cause codes (WHO 2011).

Source: AIHW National Mortality Database.

For more detail, see Data tables E16–18.

Seasonal differences

Hospital admissions for fall injuries remain relatively consistent over the year.

In March 2020, COVID-19 restrictions interrupted the usual activity of Australians. The restrictions coincided with a marked drop in overall injury hospitalisations. For falls, there were 14% fewer hospitalisations from March to May than in the same period of the previous year. With the initial restrictions easing, admissions for falls returned to previous levels by June (Figure 1).

Hospitalisations for some categories of injury do change over the seasons – see the interactive display.

Figure 1: Seasonal differences in fall injury hospitalisations, 2018–19 to 2020–21

Notes
1. Admission counts have been standardised into two 15-day periods per month.
2. A scale-up factor has been applied to June admissions to account for cases not yet separated.

Source: AIHW National Hospital Morbidity Database.

Trends over time

The age-standardised rate of hospitalisations due to falls in 2020–21 was 7.0% higher than the previous year. The previous year had seen a dip that appears to have been driven by COVID-19 restrictions.

Over the period from 2011–12 to 2016–17 there was an average annual increase of 1.9% for the age-standardised rate of hospitalisations.

There is a break in the time series for hospitalisations between 2016–17 and 2017–18, due to a change in data collection methods (see the technical notes for details).

For deaths due to falls, the age-standardised rate for 2019–20 was 3.0% lower than a year earlier. The average annual increase in rate between 2010–11 and 2019–20 was 0.5% (Figure 2).

Figure 2: Fall injury hospitalisations and deaths, by sex and year

For more detail, see Data tables C1–3 and F1–4.

Age and sex differences

People aged 65 and over were more likely to be hospitalised or die due to a fall compared with other life-stages.

Falls is one of the few causes of injury where females outnumber males, in both hospitalisations and deaths.

For injuries caused by falls:

• The very oldest were most at risk of hospitalisation. There were 17,200 hospitalisations per 100,000 for people aged 95 and over in 2020–21 (see Data tables A1–3 for 5-year age groups)
• 58% of hospitalisations in 2020–21 and 94% of deaths in 2019–20 were for people aged 65 and over
• 56% of hospitalisations in 2020–21 and 52% of deaths in 2019–20 were for females (Figure 3).

Figure 3: Fall injury hospitalisations and deaths, by age group and sex

Different age groups tend to engage in different activities, leading to a different pattern of fall types for each age group. For hospitalisations from falls in 2020–21:

• Furniture was involved in 28% of cases among young children aged 0–4
• Playing equipment was involved in 24% of cases among older children 5–14
• Slips, trips, and stumbles become responsible for a greater proportion of cases as people age (Table 3).

Notes
1. Percentages may not add to 100 due to rounding.
2. Codes in brackets refer to the ICD-10-AM (11th edition) external cause codes (ACCD 2019).
Source: AIHW National Hospital Morbidity Database.

For more detail, see data tables B11–12.

Severity

There are many ways that the severity, or seriousness, of an injury can be measured. Some of the ways to measure the severity of hospitalised injuries are:

• number of days in hospital
• time in an intensive care unit (ICU)
• time on a ventilator
• in-hospital deaths.

The average number of days in hospital, and the rate of in-hospital deaths for falls were both greater than for all hospitalised injuries in 2020–21. However, the percentage of falls that included time in ICU and the percentage requiring continuous ventilatory support were both lower than for all injuries (Table 4).

Note: Average number of days in hospital (length of stay) includes hospitalisations that are transfers from 1 hospital to another or transfers from 1 admitted care type to another within the same hospital, except where care involves rehabilitation procedures.

Source: AIHW National Hospital Morbidity Database.

For more detail, see Data tables A13–A15.

Nature of injuries sustained

In 2019–20, the head and neck were the body parts most often identified as the main site of injury in fall hospitalisations (Figure 4). In part, this may reflect the inherently serious nature of head and neck injuries.

Figure 4: Fall hospitalisations by main body part injured, 2019–20

Hover over a body part for more information:

Notes

1. Main body part refers to the principal reason for hospitalisation.
2. ‘Trunk’ includes thorax, abdomen, lower back, lumbar spine & pelvis.
3. Number and percentage of injuries classified as Other, multiple, and incompletely specified body regions and Injuries not described in terms of body region not shown—see Data table A11.

Source: AIHW National Hospital Morbidity Database.

Fractures were the most common type of injury sustained for both males and females who were hospitalised due to a fall (Figure 5).

Figure 5: Fall injury hospitalisations, by type of injury, by sex, 2020–21

For more detail, see Data tables A10 and A11.

The type of injury sustained was different for males and females hospitalised for falls. Fractures and superficial injuries were more common for females than males. Soft tissue, open wound, intracranial, and internal organ injuries were more common for males.

There were also differences in the body part injured. Hip and lower limb injuries, and shoulder and upper limb injuries were more common for females than males. Wrist and hand injuries were more common for males.

Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people

Among Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people, injuries caused by falls led to:

• 7,900 hospitalisations in 2020–21 (Table 5)
• 45 deaths in 2019–20 (Table 6).

Rates of hospitalisation for injuries caused by falls were highest among people aged 65 and over (Figure 5).

Note: Rates are crude per 100,000 population.
Source: AIHW National Hospital Morbidity Database.

Notes

1. Rates are crude per 100,000 population.
2. Deaths data only includes data for New South Wales, Queensland, Western Australia, South Australia, and the Northern Territory.

Source: AIHW National Mortality Database.

For more detail, see Data tables A4–5 and D4–5.

Indigenous and non-Indigenous Australians

In 2020–21, Indigenous Australians were 1.4 times as likely as non-Indigenous Australians to be hospitalised due to a fall injury, after adjusting for differences in population age (Table 7). This trend was reversed for deaths in 2019–20, where non-Indigenous Australians were 1.2 times as likely to die due to a fall than Indigenous Australians, although readers are advised to use these data with caution due to low numbers (Table 8).

Notes

1. Rates are age-standardised to the 2001 Australian population (per 100,000).
2. ‘Non-Indigenous Australians’ excludes cases where Indigenous status is missing or not stated.

Source: AIHW National Hospital Morbidity Database.

Notes

1. Rates are age-standardised to the 2001 Australian population (per 100,000).
2. ‘Non-Indigenous Australians’ excludes cases where Indigenous status is missing or not stated.
3. Deaths data only includes data for New South Wales, Queensland, Western Australia, South Australia, and the Northern Territory.

Source: AIHW National Mortality Database.

For more detail, see Data table A6 and D6.

The rate of falls hospitalisations was highest among both Indigenous and non-Indigenous Australians aged 65 years and over (Figure 6). Deaths data are not presented because of small numbers.

Figure 6: Fall injury hospitalisations by Indigenous status, by age group and sex, 2020–21

For more detail, see Data tables A4–A6 and D4–D8.

Remoteness

Hospitalisations due to falls showed a slight difference from most other causes of injury when examined by remoteness of usual residence. For most causes, the most remote areas had the highest rates, and the least remote areas had the lowest. For falls, while the highest rate continues to be in the most remote areas, the lowest rate was in Inner regional areas.

In 2020–21, people living in Very remote areas were 1.4 times as likely to be hospitalised due to a fall as people living in Inner regional areas (Table 9).

Note: Rates are age-standardised per 100,000 population.

Source: AIHW National Hospital Morbidity Database.

The pattern of falls deaths according to remoteness of usual residence was also different to that of most other causes of injury. In 2019–20, people living in Inner regional areas had the highest rate and were 1.1 times as likely to die due to a fall than people living in Major cities (Table 10).

n.p. not publishable because of small numbers, confidentiality or other concerns about the quality of the data.
Note: Rates are age-standardised per 100,000 population.
Source: AIHW National Mortality Database.

For more detail, see Data tables A9 and D9.

The highest rate of fall injury hospitalisations was among the 65 and over age group living in Major cities (Figure 7).

Deaths data are not presented here because of small numbers.

Figure 7: Fall injury hospitalisations by remoteness, by age group and sex, 2020–21

For more detail, see Data tables A7–A9 and D9–10.

For information on how statistics are calculated by remoteness, see the technical notes.

Data details

Technical notes: how the data were calculated

Data tables: download full data tables

Glossary

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