Sunday, September 12, 2021
Front Page on the Sunday NY Times: "Phony Diagnoses" Used in Drugging at Nursing Homes
In a front-page Sunday article, Phony Diagnoses Hide High Rates of Drugging at Nursing Homes, The New York Times adds a subtle but important focus in providing its latest reports of a well known issue, the use of chemical restraints, including antipsychotic medications, to control behavior for people in long-term care settings. The patients have been getting "new" diagnoses of schizophrenia, thus attempting to justify the sedation associated with major antipsychotic medications, such as Haldol, despite the fact that such medications are contraindicated for dementia patients. From the article:
In 2005, the Food and Drug Administration required manufacturers to put a label on the drugs warning that they increased the risk of death for patients with dementia.
Seven years later, with antipsychotics still widely used, nursing homes were required to report to Medicare how many residents were getting the drugs. That data is posted online and becomes part of a facility’s “quality of resident care” score, one of three major categories that contribute to a home’s star rating.
The only catch: Antipsychotic prescriptions for residents with any of three uncommon conditions — schizophrenia, Tourette’s syndrome and Huntington’s disease — would not be included in a facility’s public tally. The theory was that since the drugs were approved to treat patients with those conditions, nursing homes shouldn’t be penalized.
The loophole was opened. Since 2012, the share of residents classified as having schizophrenia has gone up to 11 percent from less than 7 percent, records show.
The diagnoses rose even as nursing homes reported a decline in behaviors associated with the disorder. The number of residents experiencing delusions, for example, fell to 4 percent from 6 percent.
As the news article reports, the challenges of caring for individuals with dementia are enormous, and lack of adequate staffing is certainly a reason why families and facilities use and misuse drugs to control -- restrain -- them. But, at the same time, as I have written about on this Blog several times (see here, for example), the problem is not "just" about staffing ratios.
Special thanks to Laurel Terry, Dickinson Law Professor Emerita, for ensuring I saw this latest article.
https://lawprofessors.typepad.com/elder_law/2021/09/front-page-on-the-sunday-ny-times-phony-diagnoses-used-in-drugging-at-nursing-homes.html