St. Petersburg Times examines decline in antipsychotic drug prescriptions for Florida children

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Mar 31 2009

St. Petersburg Times recently examined how since the Florida Medicaid program last year began requiring physicians to receive approval before prescribing antipsychotic drugs to children younger than age six, the number of prescriptions for children in that age group has dropped by nearly 75%, according to new data from the Florida Agency for Health Care Administration.

In April 2008, the state began to require physicians to seek approval from the state before writing prescriptions for Risperdal, Abilify, Seroquel, Zyprexa and similar medications to children, "after intensifying public debate over the proper use of this class of antipsychotics," according to the Times.

The new data compared the prescriptions for children younger than age six from May 2008 to December 2008 with the same period a year earlier. The data do not include prescriptions for children enrolled in Medicaid HMOs or private insurance because such data is not made public. According to AHCA, the study found:

Nearly 40% fewer physicians wrote prescriptions for the drugs;
There was a 40% decline in the number of preschool-age children receiving the antipsychotics;
Of preschoolers who received prior authorization for the drugs in 2008, more than half were diagnosed with autism and pervasive developmental disorder;
Risperdal was most commonly prescribed, accounting for more than 70% of all prescriptions;
The number of children prescribed more than one of the drugs dropped, from 73 in 2007 to 28 in 2008; and
Requests from doctors seeking to prescribe the drugs were cut by two-thirds.

Dr. Helene Hubbard, a pediatrician who specializes in developmental problems, said, "It's a terrible thing. My kids are suffering." Robert Constantine of the University of South Florida said, "There's been no major outcry from doctors. And ordinarily we would have heard." According to the Times, the state still approves nearly three out of every four antipsychotic prescriptions for children, most of which are refills (Hundley, St. Petersburg Times, 3/27).

This article was reprinted from khn.org with permission from the Henry J. Kaiser Family Foundation. Kaiser Health News, an editorially independent news service, is a program of the Kaiser Family Foundation, a nonpartisan health care policy research organization unaffiliated with Kaiser Permanente.