Seniors Often Prescribed Antipsychotics in Settings Other Than Nursing Homes

Despite the known risks of antipsychotics in individuals with dementia, nursing home residents continue to be prescribed these medications off label to control symptoms of dementia. Astudy published this week in theJournal of the AmericanGeriatrics Society found that while the majority of prescriptions for antipsychotics were initiated during nursing home stays, 36% these prescriptions were initiated during hospitalizations and outpatients visits.While the findings confirm the importance of continuing to target nursing homes to reduce unnecessary antipsychotic use in this population, they also point to other settings where such interventions might also be needed, Ryan M. Carnahan, Pharm.D., M.S., of the University of Iowa and colleagues wrote.Carnahan and colleagues analyzed data on nursing home residents aged 66 and older living in Iowa contained in a linked dataset of Chronic Condition Data Warehouse Medicare data and the Long-Term Care Minimum Data Set. Residents who had nursing home stays between January 2011 and December 2014 were identified as potentially eligible if they had been prescribed antipsychotics during the study period.Of the 7,496 people included in the analysis, 64% were found to have been prescribed the antipsychotics in the nursing homes, whereas 18.6% and 17.5% were prescribed the medications during outpatient visits and hospitalizations, respectively. Antipsychotics were typically prescribed early during nursing home stays, with 40.4% of the sample rece...
Source: Psychiatr News - Category: Psychiatry Tags: antipsychotics Chronic Condition Data Warehouse Medicare data hospitals Long-Term Care Minimum Data Set nursing home nursing home providers off label outpatient visits Ryan Carnahan Source Type: research