Home · Health · Sep 30 archive
Drugs are widely used to sedate dementia patients. Her sons wanted to keep her off them
Confirmed
In Short: Marjorie Tingley's adult sons contest Vista Grande Villa's use of antipsychotic drugs for their mother with dementia.
Marjorie Tingley's adult sons are in a fierce dispute with Vista Grande Villa, a Michigan senior living community, over the use of antipsychotic medications for their mother with dementia.
In December 2024, the Tingley sons received an urgent email from Vista Grande Villa, stating that their mother was a major safety threat and had been repeatedly taken to the emergency room.
David Tingley, one of her five sons, said in an interview, 'They just wanted to have her drugged up,' referring to the facility's approach.
The Partnership to Improve Dementia Care, launched by the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services in 2012, aims to reduce the overprescribing of antipsychotic drugs in long-term care facilities.
Despite this campaign, a JAMA study estimated that 1 in 4 Medicare beneficiaries with dementia are potentially inappropriately prescribed antipsychotics and other brain-altering medications.
The Food and Drug Administration requires pharmaceutical companies to warn that these drugs increase the chance of death in older people with Alzheimer’s and similar diseases.
The Tingley sons’ dispute highlights the ongoing challenges in balancing patient care and medication risks in long-term care facilities.
While some families and guardians agree that the benefits of these drugs outweigh the risks, those with misgivings confront a wrenching choice: consent to drugging loved ones or risk eviction from a long-term care facility.
The Tingley sons’ dispute is part of a broader issue in long-term care facilities regarding the appropriate use of antipsychotic drugs.
The Partnership to Improve Dementia Care continues to work towards reducing the use of these potent drugs, but the issue remains contentious.
What this adds
The Partnership to Improve Dementia Care's efforts to reduce antipsychotic use have not yet fully resolved the contentious issue in long-term care facilities.
The Tingley sons' dispute underscores the ongoing challenges in balancing patient care and medication risks in nursing homes.
What's confirmed
- “They just wanted to have her drugged up,” David Tingley, one of her five sons, said about Vista Grande in an interview.
- In 2012, the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services launched its Partnership to Improve Dementia Care to target overprescribing.
- In December 2024, Marjorie Tingley’s adult sons received an urgent email from the dementia care unit at Vista Grande Villa, a Michigan senior living community.
- Into the new year, Tingley’s sons and Vista Grande fiercely wrangled over one of the most contentious topics in long-term care: the use of antipsychotic medications to pacify agitated people with dementia.
- The medications come with risks: The Food and Drug Administration requires pharmaceutical companies to warn that these potent drugs increase the chance of death in older people with Alzheimer’s and similar diseases.
- More than 5 million Medicare beneficiaries have a diagnosis of dementia.
- Despite a 14-year campaign by the federal government to reduce the use of psychotropics, 1 in 4 Medicare beneficiaries with dementia are potentially inappropriately prescribed antipsychotics and other brain-altering medications that can cause delirium, falls, and hospitalizations, a JAMA study estimated.
- While some families and guardians agree that the benefits of these drugs outweigh the risks, those with misgivings confront a wrenching choice: consent to drugging loved ones or risk eviction from a long-term care facility.
What's still developing
- Republican Sen. Roger Marshall (Kansas) sued hundreds of his patients for outstanding debts and had dozens of them arrested over the course of his decades-long career as an obstetrician-gynecologist, new reporting reveals.
- Court records show that Marshall, who is running for reelection this fall, sued over 700 of his patients for debts.
- Many patients who Marshall’s office sued were new parents who had just given birth and were stuck with the delivery bill.
- And, in 81 cases, patients were arrested for missing court dates in relation to their debts — though several people interviewed by the Times said they were never notified about the court dates to begin with.
- Roger Marshall served many patients in a poor, rural part of his state.
- His practice, which he owned for over two decades, placed an 18 percent interest rate on bills for many patients — even as it served a rural area of Kansas that had a high proportion of poor and uninsured patients, for whom Marshall’s practice was the only option in the area.
- For example, she noted, clinicians frequently withhold lifesaving angiograms or stent procedures in patients with heart attacks out of fear that the contrast dye will damage the kidneys.
- The new ESC/ERA document outlines five core priorities for clinicians managing patients across the cardiorenal spectrum: While both guidelines unite cardiology and nephrology, their overarching clinical models diverge in notable ways: “Whereas [the US guidelines] are focusing on the start of obesity and then progressing to chronic kidney disease, we tackle the entire cardiovascular continuum,” Damman said.
- Routine screening for silent kidney disease in cardiac patients, aggressive blood pressure targets, and standardizing multidrug protective regimens are among key recommendations in the first-ever cardiorenal guidelines from the European Society of Cardiology (ESC).
- Sources close to the investigation tell TMZ... the probe is in its early stages, but one of the first orders of business is finding out if Presley took drugs, and where he got them.
- We're told authorities are looking into whether or not Presley was prescribed the drugs he allegedly took or if he got them from a dealer or friend... and finding the potential source is key.
- The state recently began allowing doctors to help patients kill themselves by prescribing lethal doses of medication.