How Much Blame Do Drug Companies Share in Nursing Home Overmedication?

While we would like to think the medical care of our aging parents and grandparents in Tennessee nursing homes is top notch, the simple truth is that your loved ones are frequently the victims of overmedication.

And, more and more organizations like the Department of Health and Human Services are putting the blame on the pharmaceutical drug companies who manufacture the medications used to abuse our elder population.

Here are some important facts to consider:

• In 2005, the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) issued a mandate that all pharmaceutical companies include labels on their antipsychotic medications warning that these drugs caused an increased risk of death for patients diagnosed with dementia.
• A 2007 government study found that 88% of the time, these antipsychotic drugs – usually prescribed for schizophrenia and bipolar disorder – were being distributed, and paid for by Medicare, to elderly nursing home residents with dementia.

Health and Human Services Inspector General Daniel Levinson points the finger at, not just the doctors and nursing homes, but at the drug companies themselves for this overmedication. Levinson says that these manufacturers market the drugs specifically for dementia patients.

Levinson remarked, “Despite the fact that it is potentially lethal to prescribe antipsychotics to patients with dementia, there’s ample evidence that some drug companies aggressively marketed their products towards such populations, putting profits before safety.”

Center for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) Administrator Donald Berwick wrote that the CMS is “very concerned about the nature of the contractual arrangements” between the pharmaceutical companies, doctors, and nursing homes.

If you are concerned about the overmedication of an elderly family member in a Tennessee nursing home, please contact the nursing home abuse attorneys at Bailey & Greer in Memphis right away for legal advice. There is no excuse for this exceptionally unfair abuse of our loved ones.