Read more
Federal officials seek to raise the bar for nursing home evaluations
Many nursing residents are being unnecessarily and even dangerously medicated with anti-psychotic drugs, federal audits over the last several years have proven.
Now nursing homes are being graded on how much they use such drugs.
Nearly 20 percent of all nursing homes got the lowest possible score on the new measure of anti-psychotic drug use, according to an analysis by USA Today. The national average percentage of patients receiving those drugs in nursing homes is 19.5 percent. The rate in Tennessee is 23.1 percent, and it’s 20.5 percent in Georgia.
The federal government targeted anti-psychotic overuse in nursing homes in 2011, after an audit showed the industry used the drugs to sedate or suppress patients who displayed troubling behaviors from Alzheimer’s and dementia.