Personal Injury Lawyers > Personal Injury Blog > Nursing Home Abuse > California Nursing Home Patients at Risk of Over Medication

Personal Injury Blog

California Nursing Home Patients at Risk of Over Medication

An overwhelming majority of nursing home residents may have been administered anti-psychotic medications.  This is in spite of the fact that the nursing home industry and pharmaceutical companies have known for long that the use of antipsychotic medications in patients with dementia can possibly be lethal.  That information comes from a new report by the US Health and Human Services Inspector General’s Office.

According to the report, as many as 88% of antipsychotic medications that are prescribed to elderly residents in nursing homes, are for the treatment of dementia.  Between January 1, 2007 and June 30, 2007, there were 2.1 million nursing home residents in the United States.  Out of these, 14% had a prescription for an atypical antipsychotic drug.

This is in spite of the fact that there’s a federal warning in place against the use of antipsychotic medications to treat dementia.  Back in 2005, the Food and Drug Administration issued a black box warning, cautioning that the use of anti-psychotic drugs in elderly people can increase their risk of death.  Antipsychotic medications are typically used to treat patients with serious mental illnesses, including bipolar disorder and schizophrenia.

However, Los Angeles product liability attorneys have known that very often, prescription drugs are prescribed for purposes other than those for which they are approved.  Such practices are called off-label marketing, and have been widespread in the pharmaceutical industry for a while now.  A particular medication may be beneficial in the treatment of more than one illness or condition.  Doctors and physicians may prescribe drugs to treat a condition for which it has not been approved.  However, pharmaceutical companies are expressly prohibited from promoting or marketing the use of these products for those unapproved uses.

That hasn’t stopped the pharmaceutical industry from aggressively promoting unapproved uses of drugs.  The more numbers of conditions that these drugs can be used for, the higher their profits.  Unfortunately, these unethical practices have meant thousands of patients being exposed to medications whose health effects have not been thoroughly gauged, tested and approved by the Food and Drug Administration.

Almost every major pharmaceutical company has, at some point in time, been called out for these practices.  The biggest incident involved Eli Lilly, which settled charges of off-label marketing of its antipsychotic drugs for persons in nursing homes.  Besides, the Food and Drug Administration and has also cracked down on Pfizer, AstraZeneca and Bristol-Myers Squibb for unethical off-label marketing of drugs in the past.

Elder safety groups have been lobbying for an end to such medication of nursing home residents.  According to the Campaign to Stop Chemical Restraints in Nursing Homes, more than 25% of all California nursing home residents are being given antipsychotic medications.  That makes it one out of every 4, 000 residents in the Golden State on medication that could potentially could kill him or her.

The Reeves Law Group is a law firm with offices throughout California dedicated exclusively to the representation of personal injury victims, including victims of nursing home abuse. Please visit our website at trlglaw.com. If you desire a free consultation on a personal injury matter, please call us at (800) 644-8000 or email us.

The Reeves Law Group is not representing any party in the matters discussed in this posting.

---