Drugging Residents

Just last week, McKnights reported a federal watchdog confirmed the fears of many nursing home residents’ family members: their loved ones were being drugged.  Probably because of unsafe and short staffing levels.

A review of 40 nursing homes found that staff tends to diagnose healthy patients with Schizophrenia simply so they can administer antipsychotic sedative drugs to them. There is no doubt this is done unintentionally, as nursing homes have a history of diagnosing absurdly high numbers of residents with Schizophrenia in order to sedate them and make nurses’ lives easier.

In each case, family members were not contacted and legitament consent was not received. This all comes despite the fact that this medication can at times be deadly to patients. However, Congress is now calling on CMS to distinguish between “appropriate and inappropriate” prescriptions of psychotics. Further demands were made to CMS, asking the organization to enforce the bare minimum requirements such as informing residents and family members when antipsychotic drugs are administered, reduce inappropriate schizophrenia diagnoses, and more diagnosis monitoring and oversight.