Are rehabs and hospice working together?

I don't think that rehab and hospice are in "cahoots" if that's what you mean. Who was the caregiver who told you they purposely overmedicate patients? IF this is the case, it should be reported!
IF the rehab is too full, or the care is poor, I'd move my parent or patient to a better one (already have done this twice with mother).

People always think hospice is out to kill old people. That's patently not true, they provide palliative and/or end of life care. They would probably not be working with a patient who is rehab for, say, a hip replacement. My mother was UNDER-medicated, if anything, b/c they wanted her to be compliant and actually DO her PT and OT.

Perhaps the dx that mother was shutting down seemed appropriate at the time. We went through this with mother also. Then she's finally shaken off the anesthesia (and in the elderly that can take weeks, literally!!).

If you're looking for some kind of collusion, I don't see it. I'm glad your mother is better, Patients always feel better in their "home" setting! If you took Ativan and Morphine round the clock, you'd feel pretty drowsy yourself.

My mother was in a rehab/nursing home. When I say overmedicate I actually mean medications that aren't completely necessary. Most of the rehab/nursing homes I see this is something they do often. My mother went down hill when they put her on namenda(memantine hci) for dementia. She sleep constantly and barely talked. since she stopped taking that medicine, she is like a different person. I also did some research and found out it can cause a person to become like a zombie. That is why you see a lot of nursing home patients completely out of it. My mother's caregiver I hired from a agency worked in some of these homes and has seen this.this is very common. I wish I knew this beforehand.

Dat1917, selecting medications for people with dementia is a trial-and-error process. For one thing, it isn't always possible to determine what kind(s) of dementia someone has. And for another, we simply don't have medications that have been tested for various kinds of dementia. Namenda was tested and approved for ALZ. Would it work for Lewy Bodies? Vascular? That is pretty much guess work.

And then there are drugs that were not intended to treat dementia, but are being used "off label" for symptoms within dementia. Nearly every caregiver in my support group had experience with Seroquel prescribed for their loved ones. For about half it made no difference and even made symptoms worse. For others it was the miracle drug that allowed them to keep their loved ones home. Many doctors have the outlook, "Try it. If there are side effects we'll stop. If it works, great!"

I don't know how you can tell, just visiting in a nursing home, which patients are being given medications that "aren't completely necessary."

A hospitalist told us my mother's organs were shutting down and she probably wouldn't last the week. She was dismissed from hospice care three months later, and lived another two years. That hospitalist was wrong. There was no collusion between different care programs. She was simply wrong.