Monitoring Psychotropic Drug Use in Nursing Homes

Previous OIG work found that elderly nursing home residents who were prescribed antipsychotics, a type of psychotropic drug, were at risk for harm. In response, the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) took steps to address the risk of harm to nursing home residents. One such step was introducing a quality measure to track the rates of antipsychotic drug use in residents without an appropriate diagnosis. Recently, CMS and researchers expressed concerns that some nursing homes underreport antipsychotic drug use and may inaccurately report certain patient diagnoses in order to avoid CMS monitoring. Additionally, research on antipsychotic drug use has highlighted the need to closely monitor all psychotropic drug use to accurately oversee drug use in nursing homes. We will determine the extent to which there are inconsistencies, if any, between (1) Medicare claims data for residents prescribed psychotropic drugs compared to nursing home self-reported data on residents who received psychotropic drugs, and (2) Medicare claims data as it relates to the diagnoses that exclude residents from monitoring in the antipsychotic quality measure compared to nursing home self-reported data on resident diagnoses.

Announced or Revised	Agency	Title	Component	Report Number(s)	Expected Issue Date (FY)
Completed	Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services	Monitoring Psychotropic Drug Use in Nursing Homes	Office of Evaluation and Inspections	OEI-07-19-00490	2021