Bipolar Disorder in Nursing Homes: Impact on Antipsychotic Use, Diagnosis Patterns, and New Diagnoses in People with Dementia

Abstract

Objectives Nursing home quality measures include the proportion of residents who receive antipsychotics. Residents with bipolar disorder are included even though antipsychotics are FDA-approved for this indication. We evaluated how including residents with bipolar disorder impacted the antipsychotic use quality measure for long-stay residents. We evaluated the agreement of minimum data set (MDS) bipolar disorder diagnoses with Medicare data, whether dementia was diagnosed before bipolar disorder, and how less-specific bipolar disorder diagnoses impacted findings. Design Cross-sectional study. Setting Nursing homes in Iowa. Participants 21,955 long-stay nursing home residents in the first quarter of 2014. Measurements We identified antipsychotic use and bipolar disorder using MDS data. We compared MDS bipolar disorder diagnoses with Chronic Conditions Warehouse (CCW) “ever” bipolar disorder indicators, and prior year claims. We compared CCW condition onset dates to identify bipolar disorder diagnosed after dementia. Results The mean (SD) proportion receiving antipsychotics was 19.6% (11.1%) with bipolar disorder and 18.3% (10.8%) without. The positive predictive value (PPV) of MDS bipolar disorder diagnoses was 80.2% versus CCW lifetime indicators, and 74.6% versus claims. PPV decreased by 27.1% when “bipolar disorder, unspecified” and “other bipolar disorders” diagnoses were excluded. Nearly three-quarters of residents with bipolar disorder had dementia. Over half of those with dementia had dementia first per CCW records. This proportion was lower among those with more specific bipolar disorder diagnoses or MDS bipolar disorder indicators. Conclusions Bipolar disorder in nursing home residents is often first diagnosed after dementia using nonspecific diagnoses. This practice deserves further evaluation.