Poliakoff & Associates, P.A. Medications No Comments

Psychotropic Drug Use

The Office of Inspector General for the DHHS confirmed that nursing homes continue to give unsafe psychotropic drugs to residents. The failure or refusal to cease the unsafe practice after decades of FDA warnings is shocking.

Read the report —Long-Term Trends of Psychotropic Drug Use in Nursing Homes.

Modern Healthcare: Nursing Home Antipsychotic Drugs Use Is Safety Concern: HHS OIG

Eight out of 10 nursing home residents received psychotropic drugs from 2011-2019. Residents of facilities with low staff ratios and with high shares of low-income people are more likely to receive psychotropic medicines. (Berryman, 11/17)

Antiepileptic prescriptions are on the rise in nursing homes. Caregivers give antiepileptics to nursing home residents with dementia despite no scientific to support its use in this population. This needs to stop.  Full findings were published in the Journal of the American Geriatrics Society.

The Washington Post: Epilepsy Drugs As ‘Chemical Restraint’ On Rise In Nursing HomesGovernment policies curb use of dangerous psychiatric drugs for nursing home residents have an unintended side effect: greater use of anti-seizure medications. Evidence shows physicians specializing in nursing home care traded one dangerous sedative for another in response to regulatory scrutiny. The caregivers sedate dementia patients with anticonvulsant medications rather than antipsychotics. (Rowland, 11/17)

overmedicated, undereducated, exactly, how, want