Utilizing Today’s Hospital Beds to Support your Fall Prevention Programs

Updated article on October 16, 2025, written by Jay Hennig.

Patient falls remain one of the most common and costly adverse events in healthcare settings. Every year, nearly one million patients experience a fall during hospitalization in the U.S. alone. Of these, more than 250,000 result in injuries and approximately 11,000 leads to death. Falls commonly occur in patients' rooms, often unwitnessed by healthcare workers. 

The consequences are not only physical and emotional for the patient, their families and the care Team but also financial. For healthcare providers, the burden is substantial: the average length of stay for a fall-related admission extends to 13 days, with costs reaching as high as $104,000 per patient. 

One of the reasons fall prevention remains such a pressing issue is the reality of hospital staffing. Over-stretched health workers are often responsible for many patients at once, leaving less time for direct observation and timely intervention. This imbalance between patient needs and available resources creates an environment where even small risks can escalate into serious 

In this article, we’ll explore six best practices for fall prevention in clinical environments and how, with the right protocols and right equipment, healthcare teams can make a real difference.

An integrated approach to fall prevention in hospitals.

1. Maintain the bed in the lowest and safest position for each patient based on their risk factors and physical abilities.

This may sound obvious, yet in practice, peeping beds in the lowest safe position is one of the hardest to consistently reinforce and verify compliance with nurses and support staff work in environments where priorities compete by the minute: a patient needs assistance in the bathroom, another requires medication, and alarms sound down the hall. 

Amid all of those competing priorities, beds may unintentionally remain in an unsafe position for each individual patient. For patients at risk of falling/rolling out of bed or presenting with impaired ability to safely sit or stand, the difference between maintaining safety and incurring a fall with or without injury can be determined by only a few inches. 

Umano’s Ook snow™ bed was designed with these realities in mind. Its ultra-low 10-inch height significantly reduces the distance to the floor, thereby reducing or preventing patient injuries with falls out of bed, while the Minimum Height Lock ensures that once the bed is set to its safest level for an individual patient, it stays there. 

Staff members no longer have to rely solely on memory to enforce this best practice; the bed itself becomes part of the safety protocol and healthcare team. This integration not only helps keep patients safe, but also reduces anxiety for staff and patients, while allowing teams to focus on other competing priorities. 

2. Enable bed exit alarms with Auto Arm 

Perhaps the greatest unpredictability in fall prevention is knowing when a patient will decide to get out of bed. Nurses can’t be at every bedside every moment, and patients, especially those with cognitive impairment, often overestimate their own abilities. 

Bed exit alarms were developed to bridge this gap; however, they rely on consistent use. During a hectic shift, it’s easy to forget to reactivate an alarm when a patient returns to bed. The result: a safety measure that can fail. 

Umano Medical’s Auto Arm feature helps resolve this problem by removing the possibility of human error in forgetting to turn on a bed exit alarm. When a patient returns to bed, the alarm automatically re-engages without requiring extra steps from medical staff. 

This not only ensures the alarm is active when it matters most but also relieves staff of yet another task on their already full checklist. The system operates quietly in the background, providing workers with peace of mind and patients with an additional layer of protection.

3. Use visual cues for bed exit alarm status 

When it comes to safeguarding patients, quick access to accurate information is essential. Without clear visual indicators, a nurse might need to step closer to the bed, double-check settings, or even miss an alarm that has been deactivated. Multiply that by a dozen patients on a shift, and the room for error grows. 

This is where illuminated controls and side-view lights on Umano Medical’s hospital beds change the equation. At a glance, whether from across the room or while passing quickly through the ward, staff can see whether a bed exit alarm is armed and active. In fact, Umano Medical beds can be programmed with three different levels of detection based on individual patient risk factors. 

These simple cues dramatically reduce the cognitive load on healthcare professionals and can improve adherence to fall prevention and safety protocols.

4. Leverage pictograms to communicate individual patient fall or safety risks to staff and patient visitors. 

The Inform Safety Message Center was designed as a visual risk communication safety partner. Real-time cues and pictograms highlight situations that require attention, whether it’s a reminder to adjust a setting or a warning about factors that increase the chance of a fall. 

For a nurse juggling multiple patients, these on-bed prompts act as an added safety net, reinforcing protocols without slowing down care delivery. Over time, these visual reinforcements also support training and consistency, ensuring that fall prevention isn’t left to chance but built into the daily rhythm of care. 

5. Document and monitor mobility trends

Falls are rarely isolated events. They often connect to larger patterns: patients spending long hours in bed, reduced mobility, or delayed repositioning. Yet tracking these patterns is notoriously difficult. 

Documentation requires time, and when staff are over-extended, mobility records may not capture the full picture. The result is a reactive approach to fall prevention rather than a proactive one. 

Integrated hospital bed solutions, like Umano Connect™, which includes in-bed time tracking, bed status and turn reminders, minimize this gap. By automating parts of the monitoring process, these features ensure that crucial information about patient activity is collected consistently. These prove to be vital tools to anticipate bed exits and prevent patient falls. 

Over days or weeks, staff can identify trends that signal potential issues and intervene earlier, whether by adjusting care plans, involving physical therapy, or increasing observation. 

These insights become part of a broader ecosystem that aligns caregivers, alerts teams in real time, and provides the data needed to continuously improve fall prevention strategies.

6 - Bed status management

Fall prevention isn’t only about what happens in the moment a patient tries to get out of bed—it’s about making sure we prevent or minimize patient harm before an event even occurs by ensuring a patient’s bed is maintained in the safest and appropriate configuration for their specific needs and abilities. 

That’s where bed status management comes in. Umano Medical beds allow caregivers to set and monitor essential parameters—such as head-of-bed angle, bed height, and side rail positions—and be alerted if something changes. These notifications help to ensure the bed is maintained in the safest position for the patient. It’s a quiet safeguard that keeps the whole team aligned and compliant with safety standards. 

With the Umano Connect platform, these safeguards are amplified. Care teams can remotely view key details such as bed status management items, “in bed time,” bed exit system status and zone, auto-arm activation, patient presence, turn reminders, and even which Inform pictograms are in use. Instead of relying solely on in-room checks, caregivers gain a comprehensive, real-time view that supports safety, mobility, and personalized recovery. 

In practice, this turns the bed into more than a place of rest—it becomes an active partner in care. By combining safety compliance with digital monitoring and mobility insights, Umano Connect empowers caregivers to anticipate risks, set recovery goals, and keep patients moving safely toward discharge. 

Enhancing clinical vigilance and proactive care 

Preventing falls isn’t about adding more checklists or complex protocols. It’s about creating conditions to empower clinicians and healthcare employees. 

With advanced hospital bed technologies supporting everyday workflows, medical professionals can dedicate more attention to patient outcomes rather than responding to urgent situations that could have been avoided.

Interested in learning more about Umano Medical’s forward-thinking solutions for safer patient care?