We at Steady Strides recently concluded a thorough literature review on what interventions work for preventing falls in older adults at long term care facilities.
It appears that trying to reduce falls without providing additional resources or with attempting to only focus on one or two problem areas does not work.
It appears that using a multi-component approach, that is tailor made to the patient and spans both patient, environment, organizational and human factor levels seems to be effective.
This can be well illustrated with the raging debate if exercise is effective in preventing falls in long term facilities. Though a systematic review and meta-analysis suggested that exercise at large did not play a role in preventing falls (J Adv Nurs. 2018 Nov;74(11):2511-2522), a different systematic review showed that not all exercise interventions are created equal: exercise programs combined with tailored other fall interventions and challenge balance training to improve balance skills, do seem to be effective (Worldviews Evid Based Nurs. 2017 Feb;14(1):74-80).
It further appears that fall prevention interventions are particularly effective in preventing recurrent falls and not first falls (J Am Geriatr Soc. 2015 Feb;63(2):211-21 ).
Vitamin D supplementation was also shown to be effective (Cochrane Database Syst Rev. 2012 Dec 12;12:CD005465 ).
Overall, if your loved one is in a long term facility, e.g. a nursing home, consider having Vitamin D on board and having a specialist in providing tailor-made fall prevention interventions who knows how to prescribe exercise and works well with the rest of healthcare team across multiple organizational levels.