SAN ANTONIO – When using prescription medications, it's important to take the correct dose at the right time. If you are on several prescriptions every day, it can be easy to make a mistake, and doing so can be dangerous.
Daily pill organizers can help, but if you take more than four pills a day, you might need something bigger.
Between prescriptions and over-the-counter medicines, Susan Miles takes about 15 pills a day. Until she found the right pill organizer, she would sometimes miss a dose.
"The size of the pouches can hold at least my 15 pills and that's very important for me," Miles said. "I know what I'm taking and I don't miss any pills."
It takes some time each month to fill the pouches, but Miles said it's worth it to avoid making mistakes.
"Mistakes can easily happen," Lisa Gill, with Best Buy Drugs, said. "A study shows that taking five or more medications increases your risk of errors, like taking the wrong drug or taking it at the wrong time."
Some independent pharmacies and a handful of chains offer a blister pack service for sorting your medications according to when you should take them. It's especially useful with more complicated regimens.
Some online pharmacies can help with mailed medications.
An online pharmacy called PillPack syncs up your prescriptions so they refill at the same time. It then organizes them into individualized packets based on the time of day at which you take them. Then, it ships the packets to you.
PillPack can add in most over-the-counter drugs and supplements you take, and it accepts most insurance. But it does not fill prescriptions for drugs that can cause dependency, such as the pain reliever Vicodin or the attention deficit hyperactivity disorder drug Adderall.
There are also several apps that will help you get organized. Two of them, Medisafe and Mytherapy, send phone alerts to notify caregivers if you miss a pill.
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