Validity and reliability of the modified John Hopkins Fall Risk Assessment Tool for elderly patients in home health care

This prospective cohort study was conducted to evaluate the validity and reliability of the modified Johns Hopkins Fall Risk Assessment Tool (mJH-FRAT) among elderly patients receiving home health care visits. Out of 107 patients, 33 (30.8%) had one or more falls and seven (6.5%) experienced falls with injury. Receiver Operating Characteristics of the tool in predicting falls showed an Area Under Curve (AUC) of 0.66 (p = 0.011) with sensitivity and specificity of 72.5% and 52.2% at the cutoff score of 14. For predicting falls with injury, the AUC was 0.82 (p = 0.016) with sensitivity and specificity of 100% and 65.9% at the cutoff score of 17. Inter-rater reliability of the tool was 85.7% agreement with Cohen's kappa of 0.714 (p < 0.001). The mJH-FRAT is a simple and easy-to-use multi-factor fall risk assessment tool with promising sensitivity, specificity and inter-rater reliability for prospectively identifying patients at risk of falls with injury among community-dwelling elderly populations.