HOUSTON: Public subsidies for antipsychotic medications used in nursing homes should be restricted to curb the “outrage” of harmful overprescribing of the powerful drugs to the elderly, experts say.
Three top figures in healthcare provision for the elderly made the call as a high-level stakeholder meeting considered how to combat high rates of inappropriate drug prescribing for the elderly.
Previously unreported findings of a key drugs-use committee has, meanwhile, backed concerns about antipsychotic overprescribing confirming “high and inappropriate utilisation” in the elderly and declaring overall use “a major quality use of medicines problem”.
A former chairman of a drug utilisation subcommittee said that high rates of prescribing of antipsychotics to the elderly with dementia in residential aged-care were “an outrage”…