KY Lawyers Join Call to End Improper Use of Antipsychotic Drugs in Nursing Facilities

Kentucky nursing home abuse and neglect lawyer Lee Coleman endorsed a recommendation to penalize nursing homes that use powerful psychiatric drugs inappropriately to calm patients who have dementia.

“We support the recommendations by U.S. Health and Human Services Inspector General Daniel Levinson that nursing homes that continue to inappropriately drug their residents with antipsychotic medications be denied Medicare payments for these drugs,” said Coleman, of Hughes & Coleman Injury Lawyers, a Kentucky personal injury firm that focuses on protecting the rights and interests of nursing home abuse and neglect victims.

“Medicare officials must step in to curb this dangerous practice, because they hold the purse strings,” Coleman said.

According to a Fox News report, Levinson recently told the Senate Committee on Aging that hundreds of thousands of elderly nursing home patients in the U.S. with dementia regularly receive drugs designed to control hallucinations, delusions and other abnormal behavior in people suffering from schizophrenia and bipolar disorder.

Despite repeated government warnings that the practice is unapproved, nursing homes administer antipsychotic drugs to control the aggressive behavior that is sometimes symptomatic of dementia, the report said. Antipsychotics raise blood sugar and cholesterol, often resulting in weight gain and other side effects dangerous to the elderly.

Levinson proposed that Medicare force nursing homes to pay for drugs that are prescribed inappropriately and consider barring nursing homes that continue to use antipsychotics inappropriately from Medicare, according to the Associated Press.

Full Article and Source:
Kentucky Nursing Home Abuse and Neglect Attorneys Join Call to End Improper Use of Antipsychotic Drugs in Nursing Homes

See Also:
Bowling Green Attorney Says Lawmakers Missed Opportunity To Protect State’s Nursing Home Residents From Abuse And Neglect