June Kelly looking at photos of her mother, Marilyn Credit: James Buck

The administration of President Donald Trump is seeking to curtail nursing home regulations, including those that limit the use of antipsychotic drugs in dementia patients.

NPR reported Saturday that the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services, which regulates nursing homes, is proposing a slate of rules that would save operators a collective $600 million annually. The proposal is the latest way the Trump administration is working to loosen strict federal oversight of the industry. CMS has already reduced the fines paid by homes that violate rules.

Using certain antipsychotic drugs to medicate elders with dementia has been widely criticized because that can hasten cognitive decline. Last week, Seven Days and Vermont Public Radio reported allegations by Vermont women that their late mother, Marilyn Kelly, had been quietly drugged with daily doses of Haldol, a powerful and sedating medication, in a residential care home in Rutland.

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Marilyn’s daughter, June, said she was initially unaware that Our House Too was giving her mother Haldol. Family members who arrived to visit found her in a stupor, they said.

“There was no discussion about putting Mom on Haldol,” June alleged. “There was no discussion about the implications of what Haldol would do to our loved one.”

A co-owner of the home declined to comment. In court filings in a suit related to Marilyn’s treatment, the home has denied that it administered the medication inappropriately.

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Worse for Care: When Elder Homes Stumble, Frail Vermonters Get Hurt

Vermonters entrust 133 residential care homes and assisted living facilities with providing services for more than 3,000 elderly residents. For this joint investigation, Seven Days and Vermont Public Radio reviewed five and a half years of complaints and state inspections of these homes. Some facilities weren’t clean, kept sloppy records, or fed seniors cheap, high-sodium foods, records show. Some of the most serious lapses: Seniors have been assaulted, exploited or treated in undignified ways. For this series, we created our Vermont Eldercare Navigator, which allows the public to easily review inspection reports.

Residential care homes such as Our House Too and assisted living facilities are regulated by states, and the Trump proposal would not immediately affect the 133 such facilities in Vermont.

But 40 nursing homes in the state would be affected.

Eldercare advocates have criticized the proposal, which would extend the amount of time for which doctors could prescribe antipsychotic drugs to nursing home residents between examinations, NPR reported. 

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Worse for Care: When Elder Homes Stumble, Frail Vermonters Get Hurt

Vermonters entrust 133 residential care homes and assisted living facilities with providing services for more than 3,000 elderly residents. For this joint investigation, Seven Days and Vermont Public Radio reviewed five and a half years of complaints and state inspections of these homes. Some facilities weren’t clean, kept sloppy records, or fed seniors cheap, high-sodium foods, records show. Some of the most serious lapses: Seniors have been assaulted, exploited or treated in undignified ways. For this series, we created our Vermont Eldercare Navigator, which allows the public to easily review inspection reports.

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Derek Brouwer was a news reporter at Seven Days 2019-2025 who wrote about class, poverty, housing, homelessness, criminal justice and business. At Seven Days his reporting won more than a dozen awards from the Association of Alternative Newsmedia and...

3 replies on “Feds Would Expand Use of Drugs Criticized in Vermont Eldercare Lawsuit”

  2. Donald Trump is a cruel, vindictive, psychopath. If anyone needs anti-psychotic medications, it is him.

  3. I’d hate for this discussion to get derailed by people trying to pick a fight. It’s too important, and we need this discussion about what our elders need and how to make sure they are treated appropriately. A few years ago a friend’s mother had been placed in a nursing home after breaking her hip. (This was not in VT, but is an example of the same thing.) It was meant to be temporary, but it dragged on and on. It was obvious she was being drugged: she had shown no signs of dementia prior to entering the nursing home. Care was marginal, and this woman, healthy until then, died at about the time that she should have been released. There was a pattern at this facility of this happening, and of the facility manipulating paperwork in order to acquire property from the estate, ostensibly to pay bills. The state in question tried to intervene, but the family gave up because of fear of financial pressure from the facility. It is not just a matter of the medication alone, but of a pattern of manipulation of both families and patients by some facilities that needs to be addressed as a whole.

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