Powerful Drugs Used to Subdue Elderly - USA

Prescription Abuse Seen In U.S. Nursing Homes
Powerful Antipsychotics Used to Subdue Elderly;

By LUCETTE LAGNADO

In recent years, Medicaid has spent more money on antipsychotic drugs for Americans than on any other class of pharmaceuticals -- including antibiotics, AIDS drugs or medicine to treat high-blood pressure.

One reason: Nursing homes across the U.S. are giving these drugs to elderly patients to quiet symptoms of Alzheimer's disease and other forms of dementia.

Nearly 30% of the total nursing-home population is receiving antipsychotic drugs, according to the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services, known as CMS. In a practice known as "off label" use of prescription drugs, patients can get these powerful medicines whether they are psychotic or not. CMS says nearly 21% of nursing-home patients who don't have a psychosis diagnosis are on antipsychotic drugs.

That is what happened to a woman listed in New York state health department inspection records as Resident #18. The 84-year-old Alzheimer's patient, who lives at the Orchard Manor nursing home in Medina, N.Y., likes to wander and roll her wheelchair around her unit, according to a report filed earlier this year, and sometimes she nervously taps her foot.
To address her behavior, which was considered disruptive, Resident #18 was given a powerful antipsychotic drug called Seroquel, a drug approved for schizophrenia and bipolar disorder. Resident #18 is not psychotic and Seroquel -- like other atypical antipsychotics -- carries a "black box" warning that elderly dementia patients using it face a higher risk of death.
"She is a handful," says Thomas Morien, administrator of Orchard Manor. "Other residents complain about her because often at night, she will get up and go to their rooms." The patient has since been taken off the drugs.

The growing off-label use of antipsychotic medicines in the elderly is coming under fire from regulators, academics, patient advocates and even some in the nursing-home industry.

"You walk into facilities where you see residents slumped over in their wheelchairs, their heads are hanging, and they're out of it, and that is unacceptable," says Christie Teigland, director of informatics research for the New York Association of Homes and Services for the Aging, a not-for-profit industry group. Her research, which she believes reflects national trends, shows that about one-third of dementia patients in New York's nursing homes are on antipsychotics; some facilities have rates as high as 60% to 70%. "These drugs are being given way too much to this frail elderly population," Dr. Teigland says.

Federal and some state regulators are pushing back, questioning the use of antipsychotic drugs and citing nursing homes for using them in ways that violate federal rules. New York has increased its focus on antipsychotics in nursing homes, training inspectors to spot signs of medication abuse. Last month, the Arkansas attorney general filed suit against Johnson & Johnson and two of its units, claiming, among other things, that they "engaged in a false and misleading campaign" to promote its antipsychotic drug Risperdal to geriatric patients.

The $122 billion-a-year nursing-home industry's use of drugs raises complex issues in an aging society. Revulsion against practices such as tying down and sedating disruptive elderly patients led in 1987 to a landmark federal law, signed by President Reagan, that set limits on how and when nursing homes can physically, or chemically, restrain a patient. Since then, a rising population of elderly people suffering dementia has entered nursing facilities, many of which have overburdened staff.

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