Health Care: Regulatory Inconsistency

by Tom aka Rusty Rustbelt

Health Care: Regulatory Inconsistency

When an elderly patient is in the hospital suffering from dementia, depression or schizophrenia, the hospital nurses may administer any psychoactive or anti-psychotic drug ordered by the physician within normal protocols and practices.

When the patient becomes a nursing home resident a few days later, the resident will often be denied the medication (even possibly anti-seizure meds) because the medication is assumed to be a “chemical restraint,” and the facility needs time to clear the regulatory hurdles.

(The federal government assumes nurses drug residents into stupors so the nurses don’t have to work as hard, ignoring that nurses cannot administer a vitamin without a physician’s order.)

This pharna roller coaster hurts the patients, but it is the law of the land.

Tom aka Rusty Rustbelt