821 Burn Injury Prevention: A New Focus on the Older Population

Abstract

Abstract Introduction Historically our burn center has focused its injury prevention messaging on the pediatric population, but with the ever changing age demographic in the valley, the burn center is working on ways to ensure that our injury prevention program is putting the right message out to the right population. With this goal in mind we looked at our hospital admissions, patient length of stay and inpatient hospital charges by age group to identify the populations in most need of injury prevention messaging. Methods A 3-year retrospective data review of burn admissions to our facility was performed. the review looked at patients separated into 9 different age groups, these groups were ranked (1 being the highest incidence to the lowest ranked 9th), comparing number of admissions, length of stay and cost of care. We looked at how each age group ranked as a total as well as average per patient. The rankings were used to identify high risk age groups. Results Burn registry data showed that the most frequent burn admissions to our burn center were not our pediatric or young adult populations. We further discovered that the older populations were admitted in the largest numbers and tended to have greater length of stays as well as higher hospital charges. Conclusions The focus of the hospital’s current injury prevention efforts is on the pediatric population. While this is a group that must always have a high priority in our prevention efforts, there is an under-served population in our community. The senior population in our valley need a customized injury prevention plan to help decrease burn injuries and admissions to the hospital. Registry data will be used to focus prevention efforts based on: seasonality of injury, mechanism of injury, and geographical location. Applicability of Research to Practice Utilization of burn registry data divulged gaps in our burn injury prevention efforts. Age specific prevention campaigns need to be created, implemented and tracked for effectiveness.