Bed falls aren't inevitable. Here's the proof.

For a long time, fall prevention programs in long-term care have been built around an unavoidable reality: the belief that bed falls are bound to happen. The goal has been to manage and reduce them where possible: to minimize injury risk, document thoroughly, and continuously refine protocols.

This long-standing idea now deserves challenging, because the evidence from facilities using Accora FloorBeds suggests something different: for high-risk residents, bed falls don't have to be managed. They can be eliminated.

Why the standard of care isn't good enough

The typical fall prevention toolkit in LTC includes bed alarms, low beds, padded bed mats, AI monitoring tools, and careful documentation. These are mitigations. They accept the fall as inevitable and try to soften its consequences or catch it sooner.

Low beds, the most common equipment-based intervention, generally sit at around 8 inches. That sounds low. But research by Dr. George Zaphir concluded that for residents at fall risk, the bed should be within 4 inches of the floor. Here's why: 8 inches generates double the impact force of 4 inches. The difference, in practice, is between a fall with injury and one without.

That's a significant improvement, but it's still a mitigation story. The real shift happens when you combine a true floor-level bed with a level-plane safety mat, because at that point, you're not just reducing the risk of bed fall injuries. You're eliminating the bed fall entirely.

What elimination actually looks like in practice

Lutheran Nursing Home, Chicago, Illinois

Lutheran Home identified seven residents with a documented history of bed falls and placed them on Accora FloorBed 1s during a six-month evaluation.

The result: a 100% reduction in falls from the bed.

The Director of Nursing, Lori Nolden, commented: "The results were great, much better than expected. I knew the bed was going to be appropriate and a great product, I just didn't realise how much a fall saving it would be. The staff really feel the bed keeps the residents safe."

Masonic Villages, Pennsylvania

Masonic Villages conducted a more structured two-phase clinical evaluation across three facilities, tracking 20 high-risk residents over comparable periods: first on a standard care bed with a mattress platform range of 7 to 30 inches, then on the Empresa FloorBed at a minimum height of 3.9 inches.

In phase one: 26 of 58 total falls were bed falls. Six residents sustained injuries.

In phase two: bed falls dropped by 77%. The number of injurious bed falls was zero.

The Empresa FloorBed was subsequently adopted as the preferred bed for all high fall-risk residents across Masonic Villages facilities.

RFMS LTC Support Services, Illinois and Iowa

RFMS, a network of 18 facilities, approached the problem from a different angle. Their challenge wasn't just reducing falls; it was the "recurrent roller": residents who habitually move to the edge of the bed, traditionally triggering a fall from bed height to mat, with the associated injury risk and mandatory reporting.

Their solution was to pair the Empresa FloorBed with a level-plane safety mat, creating a continuous, level plane rather than a drop.

The outcome, in the words of Shay Wiggs, Regional Therapy Consultant at RFMS: "The residents that we used the Empresa Bed with as a fall prevention approach, decreased falls to almost zero... because they didn't have a change in plane, the resident did not fall."

No change in plane. No fall. No report.

The question for your facility

The data from Lutheran Home, Masonic Villages, and RFMS points in the same direction: for high-risk residents, bed falls are a solvable problem. At floor level, the bed deck is so close to the ground that for many residents, a roll-out doesn't complete. Paired with a level-plane safety mat, there's no height differential to fall from. A roll becomes a roll, not a fall, not a report.

The solution exists, it's been clinically validated, and it's in use in facilities across the US right now.

If you'd like to see how it works in practice, book a demo with our team or read the full case studies from Lutheran Nursing Home and Masonic Villages.

References:
1. Zaphir, G. (2014). Lowest Heights of Floor Level Beds: Fall Velocity and Impact Force Analysis and Resulting Injuries.