Medical News: Nursing Home Med Errors Vary by Form of Drug - in Geriatrics, General Geriatrics from MedPage Today

Residents in nursing and old age homes are four times as likely to get an incorrect dose of medication if it's in liquid rather than pill form, researchers reported.

In a study in 55 British homes, errors included such things as incorrect measurements and not shaking a suspension, according to David Phillip Alldred, PhD, of the University of Leeds in Leeds, England, and colleagues.

Errors also were more likely with inhalers and other drug formulations, compared with pills or tablets dispensed using a monitored dosage system, Alldred and colleagues reported online in BMJ Quality and Safety.

Monitored dosage systems -- also known as unit dose systems -- consist of a tray or cassette with compartments for one or more doses for a particular day and time and are intended to simplify the administration of medications for staff, the researchers noted.

But such systems can't be used for all medications -- liquids, among others -- and it's not clear that they are safer than delivering drugs from the manufacturer's own packaging, Alldred and colleagues noted.

via medpagetoday.com

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More young people are winding up in nursing homes - Yahoo! News

Adam Martin doesn't fit in here. No one else in this nursing home wears Air Jordans. No one else has stacks of music videos by 2Pac and Jay-Z. No one else is just 26.

It's no longer unusual to find a nursing home resident who is decades younger than his neighbor: About one in seven people now living in such facilities in the U.S. is under 65. But the growing phenomenon presents a host of challenges for nursing homes, while patients like Martin face staggering isolation.

"It's just a depressing place to live," Martin says. "I'm stuck here. You don't have no privacy at all. People die around you all the time. It starts to really get depressing because all you're seeing is negative, negative, negative."

The number of under-65 nursing home residents has risen about 22 percent in the past eight years to about 203,000, according to an analysis of statistics from the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services. That number has climbed as mental health facilities close and medical advances keep people alive after they've suffered traumatic injuries. Still, the overall percentage of nursing home residents 30 and younger is less than 1 percent.

Martin was left a quadriplegic when he was accidentally shot in the neck last year by his stepbrother. He spent weeks hospitalized before being released to a different nursing home and eventually ended up in his current residence, the Sarasota Health and Rehabilitation Center. There are other residents who are well short of retirement age, but he is the youngest.

via news.yahoo.com

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Guides help recovering patients find long-term care | The Salt Lake Tribune

An uncomfortable truth for anyone facing disability for a year or more: If you go into a nursing home, you might never get out.

Under patchwork Medicare provisions, says Utah Commission on Aging Director Maureen Henry, it is more convenient for hospitals to discharge patients to nursing homes than to figure out how they might live in their homes and communities.

But what looks like the easy solution can be costly. Nursing home bills may drive more people onto Medicaid, which costs taxpayers more, and the move can unnecessarily disrupt the community and impoverish the lives of patients, Henry says.

“You’re shifting residence; you’re shifting family structure out of the community and into the nursing facility,” she says.

Now, with the help of a $700,000 grant from the federal Administration on Aging, the Utah commission is linking hospital discharge staff with “options planners,” who help guide patients and their families through a complicated array of choices for extended care.

The way Medicare and Medicaid law works, people are guaranteed care in nursing homes. But there is no similar guarantee of coverage for care outside an institution, meaning family finances may limit the choices.

“People have the right to decide where and when they receive long-term care,” Henry says. “Our objective is to try to catch people before they are scrambling in a crisis, stop giving people the runaround.”

via sltrib.com

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Patient rights overlooked in nursing home evictions | courier-journal.com | The Courier-Journal

An investigation by The Indianapolis Star found numerous examples of what the state's ombudsman for long-term care calls “a major problem”: nursing homes evicting patients without regard for their rights.

In one case, an Auburn facility dumped a resident at an emergency room and refused to take him back, leaving him stranded at the hospital for three weeks until he could find another home. In another case, a Bedford home tried to evict a brain-damaged teenager who had no safe place to go.

The newspaper also found that the state almost never punishes nursing homes, even after it has been made aware that a facility is violating state and federal laws.

“I think if we had a better enforcement system or a more punitive enforcement system, people would quit” wrongly evicting residents, said long-term care ombudsman Arlene Franklin of the state's Family and Social Services Administration. “If there were a harsher penalty for that, they wouldn't do so many inappropriate discharges.”

via courier-journal.com

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