On NPR this week, correspondent Ina Jaffe reported on an alarming trend taking place in many nursing homes across the nation: Patients are being overly medicated with antipsychotic drugs when they don’t necessarily need them. Antipsychotics are approved primarily to treat serious mental illnesses like schizophrenia and bipolar disorder, but increasingly, nursing home residents suffering from Alzheimer’s and dementia are being given the drugs.
For the piece, Jaffe talked to one family who decided to put their 73-year-old mom who’s suffering from Alzheimer’s in a nursing home. Soon after her arrival, the family said that the medical staff started putting her on antipsychotic drugs. The facility did obtain what’s known as “informed consent” from the father, still the family found her to be overly medicated.
One study in 2010 found that 71 percent of Medicaid residents in Florida nursing homes were getting some sort of psychoactive drugs, and study author says the problem is not confined to just one state. The government is aware of the problem and the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS), a government agency, has been working to curb the issue at nursing homes nationwide—with definite success. Still, Jaffe’s reporting, based on data analysis of government data undertaken by NPR, found that states that allow nursing homes to continue the questionable practice rarely get punished. Texas is one of the nation’s worst offenders.
How is California doing when it comes to addressing this problem? What mechanisms in California are in place to prevent over-medication to take place? If you have family members in a nursing home facility in Southern California, what have your experience been?
Guests:
Dr. Karl E. Steinberg, past president and current secretary, the California Association of Long Term Care Medicine; board member, American Medical Directors Association. He’s been a nursing home and hospice medical director for near 20 years in San Diego County
Alice Bonner, former director of the Division of Nursing Homes for the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS). She is currently a part-time contractor for CMS. She is also an associate professor at the School of Nursing at Northeastern University