Federal policies designed to reduce use of antipsychotic medications in nursing homes did not lead to clinically significant higher rates of schizophrenia diagnoses among residents and patients living with dementia, according to a new study published in the Journal of the American Geriatrics Society.
Schizophrenia, Tourette’s syndrome and Huntington’s disease could have been diagnosed more often because the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services excluded patients with those conditions from a quality measure the agency added to its star rating program in 2015.
From 2009 to 2018, the share of newly admitted long-stay residents given any of the three diagnoses rose from a baseline of about 2.2% but never exceeded 2.9% in the overall patient group, researchers reported.
“Nursing homes did not resort to ‘making up’ diagnoses that would allow for the use of antipsychotics in their residents with dementia,” lead researcher Theresa I. Shireman told McKnight’s Long-Term Care News. “This is good news since antipsychotics have a black box warning against their use in people with dementia.”
From the october 2024 Issue of McKnight's Long-Term Care News
