Drug data could inform stories about elder care
The 2007 National Home and Hospice Care Survey (NHHCS ) Medication Public-Use File and Documentation are now available for downloading.
One group of researchers used earlier NHHCS data to “examine changes in hospice services over time, as they were collected during the period from 1992 to 2000, paralleling the period of substantial growth in hospice use and spending.”
With recent studies and news about the increase in use of antipsychotics in the elderly, this data might be useful in reporting such stories and documenting the increase, as well as stories about how treatments have changed.
The 2007 NHHCS Medication Public-Use Data File is supported by SAS, SPSS, and STATA input statements. The documentation includes three PDF files: technical notes, a data dictionary, and a PDF file that provides drug name codes, drug estimates and rates, and drug characteristics.
N.J. psychiatric hospital botches drugs, doses
Jean Mikle of the Asbury Park Press chronicled medication errors at Ancora Psychiatric Hospital, New Jersey’s largest such institution. Mikle pored over public records and found that while hospital officials say they are safer than average, “overdoses, adverse reactions to medicines, and wrong doses of powerful drugs have harmed dozens of patients at Ancora since 2006.”
Since December, two Ancora patients have been hospitalized because of “reactions to medications” they received inside the psychiatric hospital, according to Ellen Lovejoy, the spokeswoman for the state Department of Human Services.
Brick resident Derrick Raymond, 28, who has been a patient at Ancora several times since 2002, said he could easily have been given the wrong medication because, he said, patient files were frequently in disarray.
“I’ve had my files mixed with other people’s,” Raymond said. “I could have been given the wrong medication. You start to feel like a guinea pig for medications in there.”
Mikle found cases where patients were given the wrong medication, the wrong amount of medication, no medication when some was needed, expired medication and medication intended for other patients.
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