PGx Medical is proud to partner with Brookdale Senior Living!
Rose Willingham, Wellness Director
Brookdale Senior Living Norman
On October 14, 2014 I heard PGx Medical President, Clay Bullard speak in Tulsa at the State Provider Training meeting. Pharmacogenetics was the only thing I took away from the seminar. I wrote Clay’s name down and went back and spoke to our doctors about doing the test.
I had several residents at the time on 3-4 blood pressure medications that I knew would benefit from something like this. I remember thinking, if this test can get them off of some of their meds and help prevent falls, that’s what I need to do. When something is wrong, you always look at the medications. And when someone is on three pages of meds and they are tiny, you start to wonder what is going on.
I was so impressed with Clay’s talk that I came back and told Dr. Dellinger about the program. He has always been so receptive to anything I talk to him about, so I asked Dr. Dellinger if he had ever heard about the test. He said a little, but not a lot. I told him I really want to try it and see if we can get some of our residents off medications they don’t need to be on and get them on the right medications. He said, “It sounds great! Check into it for me.”
I called PGx Medical and one of their consultants came out right away and explained the program to us. Dr. Dellinger started writing orders for me and I began testing. I also have a couple of physicians outside the facility that the residents still go out to see and they have started testing their residents as well.
We’ve been using the Metabolic Validation Program (pharmacogenetic testing) for about two years and now we test all of Dr. Dellinger’s patients with medical necessity. Dr. Dellinger comes in every two weeks and knows everything about the residents, he’s great!
I have one resident who wasn’t metabolizing any of her medications. That is one of those residents who was on three pages of medications. She was on all the wrong ones. We made some tweaks and it’s amazing, her hallucinating went away. She doesn’t hallucinate anymore and she sleeps better too. She is doing well now!
We have another lady who liked to take things away from other people. Then she quit eating. We did the test, got her on the right medications, and she did so well after we made changes to her meds that we were able to discharge her back out into the community. She was just doing that well. She is now living at home with no problems. It was the medication changes and finding the one that she metabolized and worked for her.
The majority of Dr. Dellinger’s residents that we’ve tested, we’ve made changes and tweaked and they are doing so much better. There are none that we have tested that it hasn’t worked on.
It’s great, we love it, and I will tell anyone they need to do it!
For more information on Metabolic Validation, via Pharmacogenetic Testing, contact:
PGx Medical
info@pgx.med.com
405-509-5112
www.pgxmed.com