Nursing Homes Boston
Chemical restraints (Metafilter)
The Boston Globe reports that nursing homes in the United States continue to administer antipsychotic medications to patients who do not fit criteria for these drugs, in many cases to manage behavior considered disruptive by staff. For example, "in 21 percent of US nursing homes in 2010, at least one-quarter of the residents without illnesses recommended for antipsychotic use received the medications." Overuse of antipsychotic medications appears to correlate with nursing homes that have higher staff:patient ratios and to homes that house more people covered by Medicaid/Medicare. The Globe requested data related to use of antipsychotics in the nation's 15,600 nursing homes from the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services, and analyzed this data along with other demographic information, as described in this article. The newspaper has also created an interactive database that allows the user to compare use of antipsychotics at various nursing homes.
Boston Long Term Care Planning (Nursing Home Care)