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More than 20% of adults over 40 in the United States take five or more prescriptions, making organization a little challenging. Here are some strategies for managing multiple medications.
Americans are no strangers to prescription medications — about two-thirds of adults in the United States take them. Managing one prescription isn’t all that challenging, but more than 20% over age 40 in the US take five or more, making management far more challenging.
Dr. Chika Kuwama and the team here at Hibari Family Medical appreciate the invaluable role that medications can play in supporting your health. But we also acknowledge the challenges in keeping track of them.
With that in mind, we wanted to touch on a few great strategies for managing multiple prescriptions.
Create a running master list of your medications
The first thing you should do when you have multiple prescriptions is to keep a master list with the following information:
- Medication name
- Dosage
- Prescribing doctor
A quick search on the internet for medication schedules leads you to some great printable sheets you can download for free.
We also suggest keeping a wallet card that lists your medications so you have it at all times. Many pharmacies make these cards available.
Update these lists regularly — every time you stop or start a medication. As you’ve probably already experienced, anytime you see a doctor, they want to know what medications you’re taking, and your list proves helpful with this.
Work closely with your pharmacist
We recommend using the same pharmacist for all of your medications so they can help you track them and make sure that everything you take works together.
As well, anytime you receive a new prescription, spend a minute or two reviewing the instructions with your pharmacist about taking the new medication.
Organize your medicines into daily dispensers
Once you receive your medications, we suggest organizing them in a daily pill dispenser to make taking medications much easier. Once a week, you fill the dispenser, which has compartments divided by days of the week and times of day.
Set times of day that you take medications
All the organization in the world might not help remind you to take your medications, so it’s always a good practice to have a routine. For example, take your morning meds after breakfast and before you get into your day.
In other words, associate taking your medications with other daily and routine practices. You can also find apps with timers to remind you to take your medications.
Make sure all providers are on the same page
If our team is your primary care provider, we want to make sure that all medications you take work together. So, if we send you to a specialist and they prescribe a medication, please let us know so we can track your prescriptions from our end.
Medication management is a big part of our telemedicine services as we can check in virtually, saving you a trip to our office.
During these visits, we can review your medications, arrange for refills, tweak dosing, and assess the larger picture of prescriptions to make sure everything works together to optimize your health.
If you have more questions about how to manage multiple medications, we’re happy to help. To get started, we invite you to contact our office in Edgewater, New Jersey, today.