BILLS WOULD CURB OVER-PRESCRIBING OF PSYCHIATRIC DRUGS TO FOSTER CARE KIDS

By Miriam Raftery

July 16, 2015 (Sacramento) – A package of bills have been introduced in Sacramento to curb the over-use of psychiatric drugs on foster care youths, the San Jose Mercury News reports.  But the bill fails to create new rules for doctors who prescribe such medications.

Instead, the four bills would put the responsibility on the state’s juvenile courts and social services agencies to rein in doctors treating foster kids who have been traumatized. Backers concede that the approach could make it easier to secure passage without taking on the powerful medical lobby.

The Mercury-News previously ran an investigative series titled “Drugging Our Kids” that drew statewide attention to abuses in the system. It found that nearly one in every four California foster teens are prescribed strong psychotropic drugs, with most receiving powerful antipsychotics. Moreover, doctors who prescribe drugs for foster care kids get bigger payments and more gifts from drug manufacturers than other physicians—and the more they prescribed, the more they received. The series raised serious questions about just whose interests those doctors were representing.

Under the bills proposed, juvenile courts would need to have “clear and convincing evidence” that medications were in the best interest of the children. Social workers would be notified of all prescriptions for children under 6 years old and whenever any foster child receives multiple medications or excessively high dosages of psychiatric medications. Public health nurses and state investigators would also be granted new powers to help protect kids from being overdosed or inappropriately drugged.

The four bills aimed at protecting foster care kids from over-medication with psychiatric drugs are: SB 238, SB 253, SB 319, and SB 484.  They are supported by the National Center for Youth Law and the County Welfare Directors Association of California.

Meanwhile the state’s Department of Health Care Services has begun requiring a medical justification for antipsychotics billed to Medi-Cal and has rejected thousands of prescription requests. New guidelines have also been issued for foster care providers on psychotropic drugs. Consumer Watchdog is calling for a ban on payments to doctors by drug companies pushing such medications.