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(HealthNewsDigest.com) – The widely used blood thinner Coumadin requires careful calibration: too much, and you can bleed uncontrollably; too little, and you can develop life-threatening clots.
When nursing homes fail to maintain this delicate balance, it puts patients in danger, ProPublica’s Charles Ornstein writes. His analysis of government inspection reports found that from 2011 to 2014, at least 165 nursing home residents were hospitalized or died after errors involving Coumadin or its generic version, warfarin. Studies suggest there are thousands more injuries every year that aren’t ever investigated.
Highlights from his story with the Washington Post:
- A 2007 peer-reviewed study in The American Journal of Medicine estimated that nursing home residents suffer 34,000 fatal, life-threatening or serious events related to the drug each year. North Carolina data shows more medication errors in nursing homes involve Coumadin than any other drug.
- The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS), the federal agency that regulates nursing homes, has the power to fine homes and threaten to cut off federal funding if quick action isn’t taken. More commonly, though, homes are not fined and are simply asked to correct the problems and put policies in place to keep them from happening again.
- Coumadin is tricky to manage even for otherwise healthy patients who don’t live in nursing homes. A study published last year by the lab company Quest Diagnostics found that patients taking Coumadin or its generic had lab results showing that the drugs had the desired effect only 54 percent of the time.
More in the full story here: http://www.propublica.org/
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