Personal Care Helps with Medication Management

Medication Management with Active Personal Care

Using personal care for medication management helps to identify and prevent errors by filling pill boxes, providing reminders and even administering multiple types of medications.

When taken appropriately, medications improve the quality of life of millions of people. But have you ever thought about what happens when medications are taken inappropriately?

Now I am not talking about the use of illicit or illegal drugs. I am not even talking about the inappropriate use of prescription drugs. I am talking about normal, day to day people like you and me that make a mistake. Maybe it is accidentally taking twice the dose prescribed. Perhaps you missed a dose. Whatever the case, adverse drug events (ADEs) can have a major impact on a person’s life.

Did You Know?

• ADEs account for 3.5 million physician visits, 1 million ER visits and 125,000 hospital admissions each year
• Elderly patients are 2 to 3 times more likely to visit their doctor or ER and 7 times more likely to require hospitalization after an ADE.
• ADEs are responsible for up to 30% of all hospital admissions in the elderly.
• Medications errors cause at least 1 death per day and injure more than 1.3 million people each year in the US.

If you are over the age of 65, see multiple prescribers, take 5 or more medications, have a new diagnosis, were recently discharged from the hospital or care facility, or suffer from multiple diseases, you have a higher risk of experiencing an ADE.

How Active Personal Care can help Manage Your Medications

The good news is that up to 50% of all medication related errors can be prevented. Active Personal Care is here to help. Our medication management program helps identify and prevent errors. 

It all starts with a visit from one of our nurses. One of Active’s nurses will sit down with you and review all the medications you are taking, including both prescription and over the counter medications. He or she will make sure that all are appropriately prescribed within the context of your diseases. This will allow a master list to be created of all the medications, doses, and dosing schedules. They can even help to fill pill boxes.

After this nursing visit, our personal care aides can stop by as often as needed to help with medication reminders and transportation to doctor’s offices and the pharmacy. 

Some of the ways that they can help with this include:

• Administration of OTC medication according to the labels
• Administration of prescription creams and ointments as directed
• Administer non-controlled medications, except for insulin, as directed
• Administer ear and eye drops
• Assist with administration of breathing treatments via nebulizer

To have our aides help with the administration of medications, nursing visits need to occur at least every quarter to keep the list of medications up to date.

Active Personal Care’s Tips for Caregivers:

What can you do now to help prevent medication errors?

• Use a pillbox. Pillboxes are a great way to keep your medications in order. Boxes come in all shapes and sizes and allow for medications to be organized by morning, midday, evening, and bedtime doses. Filling them up once a week allows you to not only know which medications to take when but allows you to know when you need refills earlier.
• Create a master list of medications. Keep an updated list of all the prescriptions, OTC medications, supplements and vitamins. Take this with you to all your doctor appointments. When discussing possible changes, have your provider review this list. A sample list is available through the National Institute on Aging.
• Minimize how often you go to the pharmacy. Multiple trips increases the likelihood of making mistakes. Ask your pharmacy if they can sync your refills to all fill on the same date.

Why Choose Active Personal Care?

Medications are a wonderful thing. They have improved the quality and duration of life for millions of people worldwide. But they can cause harm too, most of the time unintentionally. Medication management with Active Personal Care helps prevent these mistakes. If you or a loved one are struggling with your drug regime or recently had changes made, call us today to schedule your free, in-home consultation.