Dementia patients are reeling from the effects of outdated Medicare rules which prevent them from getting desirable medications.
Though memory loss is the most profound symptom of Alzheimer’s disease, it sometimes takes a back seat to the more than 6.5 million Americans suffering from Alzheimer’s disease because mood changes and behavior symptoms ranging from anxiety and depression to violent outbursts and psychosis tend to take the center stage in people suffering from any form of dementia, including Alzheimer’s disease.
It’s sad to note that some family members, caregivers, and even some medical providers dismiss these neuropsychiatric symptoms associated with dementia as exaggerated by the patients and actually within control.
In as much as the symptoms are disruptive and destructive, it’s advisable to realize that it’s neither the patients’ fault nor some kind of added personality traits.
These symptoms accompany the disease and the allegations and assumptions that the behavior can be controlled by the patients cause stigmatization that may lead to the patients to shy away from getting professional help and can result in depression and anxiety.
These patients must be helped beyond just managing the memory loss. There should be grand efforts to deal with the neuropsychiatric symptoms that accompany memory loss.
It’s a shame to see patients suffer in silence when clinicians can evaluate their patients’ symptoms, identify appropriate treatment strategies and give them to the caregivers to implement.
Some of these symptoms like anxiety, depression, and other inappropriate behaviors can be tamed with a predictable daily schedule that could feature engaging the individual in meaningful activity and creating a serene environment to help the mental state of the patient to be at ease.
In some cases, the patient’s neuropsychiatric is so severe that they have to be dealt with through medication.
Though the FDA approved the first medicine specifically for people with Alzheimer’s disease who had to deal with behavioral instability in 2023, outdated regulations have created hurdles that make it difficult for the medications to reach those in dire need.
Other antipsychotic drugs like olanzapine are also effective and can be prescribed to Alzheimer’s patients.
Another major hurdle is the one created by Medicare and Medicaid services which is mandated with determination of coverage for its beneficiaries and also influences other insurance plans.
These service providers have put into place policies that make it more difficult for providers to prescribe antipsychotic drugs that would help patients.
These limitations which have been put in place by Medicare and Medicaid are a stumbling block in the way of caregivers, especially in cases where the patients have to move into long-term care facilities, and it’s realized that the caregivers can’t administer the medication the patient relied on while living at home.
This needs to be dealt with head-on because being a widespread and fast-growing problem, it immensely affects people with dementia who are bound to experience mood changes, violent behavior, and other neuropsychiatric symptoms which would necessitate long-term care facility and end up not being medically catered for.
In as much as CMS limitations are premised on keeping an eye on how clinicians use certain medications in institutionalized settings, which in itself is of good intentions, the policies need to be flexible and not limit a health care professional from providing the most appropriate care for their patient’s unique symptoms and medical needs that would keep the patients medically afloat.
Policy Shift
A medical provider’s ethics can never allow them to leave a patient with complications that can be solved. It goes against the rules that govern the practice and can make them have mental provocations due to their conscience.
So that begs the question; why would some limitations make them leave dementia patients unattended to fully?
It’s everyone’s right to get high-quality, effective, and unbiased care, and based on that, CMS should unconditionally scrap the policies that go against the welfare and well-being of some patients.