Government inspects nursing homes’ antipsychotic use

Seniors in a nursing home facility
Shutterstock
Shutterstock

The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services is investigating nursing homes this month to verify whether antipsychotic medications are being given to people who are not schizophrenic.

Over the past few decades, evidence has mounted that some nursing homes wrongly report patients as having schizophrenia so they can use antipsychotic medications to sedate them, reducing the amount of care they require.

Is this actually a problem? A government report last year found that in 2019, as many as 99 nursing homes reported 20 percent or more of their residents had schizophrenia, even when those residents had no corresponding diagnoses of the disorder.

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This story originally appeared in WORLD. © 2023, reprinted with permission. All rights reserved.

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