For patients living at home and experiencing difficulty managing their medicines extra help is available from a PillDrop Pharmacist.
PillDrop’s Medication Management Service is designed to support patients improve self-management of their medicines. It involves a PillDrop pharmacist and patient working together to identify actions that will help them remember to take their medicines so they can improve their adherence.
Use this diagram to help decide if you should recommend this service to patients and their family /whanau when they are discharged home.
General factors
- Long term conditions.
- Polypharmacy and/or a complex medicines regime.
- Known or suspected hospital admission related to adverse medicine events.
- Deterioration in health resulting in admission.
- Multiple prescribers or specialties involved in patient care.
Self management factors
- Reported difficulty opening medicine bottles or tablet packaging.
- Limited support at home to assist with medicine management.
- Family/whanau or the patient report they often run out of medicine and need to use urgent prescriptions.
Adherence factors
- Reported difficulty knowing when to take medicines at home.
- Patient demonstrates difficulty understanding what, when or why they are taking their medicines.
- Family/whanau have returned a large number of medicines to the hospital for disposal.
How can your patients access LTC Services?
If the patient has difficulty with two or more factors in the above diagram, call PillDrop and speak with the pharmacist. Alternatively, patient can self-refer. Recommend they talk with a pharmacist and access this free service.
Other important information
There are no age restrictions and the service is subsidised. Should there be any costs, eg: unfunded medications, the pharmacist will discuss this with them.
