If you refill on time, you should have enough medication on hand to make it through a day quarantine. If you need more, you can always have it filled through home delivery. Pharmacies have sophisticated tools to monitor medication supplies and adjust inventories to account for events just like COVID Stockpiling can disrupt that careful system and leave people without medication. This is especially concerning with medications for people with rare conditions, or conditions like hemophilia, where medications supplies are smaller.
Medications expire, and some have a very limited shelf-life. Medication waste costs our health care system billions each year, and contributes to increased health care costs for consumers. There are ways you can achieve peace of mind with your medications during this time without concern.
Here are a few ideas:. Use our website, www. These tools can help you refill and renew medications on time so there are no disruptions in therapy. What can we show you? Tell us your role for customized content.
Such a privilege and responsibility should not be taken lightly. As ethical and compassionate professionals, community pharmacists must use all available resources to help patients in any way that we can. However, we are often confronted with individuals who want to misuse or divert drugs. I mean repeated requests, month after month, often from different prescribers and sometimes at different pharmacies.
How can a pharmacist differentiate between legitimate and illegitimate early narcotic refill requests? It is not always easy. One potential red flag is when patients regularly request early refills for narcotic prescriptions. A doctor may give the patient the prescription early for many reasons, but that does not mean it should repeatedly be filled early.
I have had doctors get very upset that a pharmacist filled a prescription early, even though the prescription had no note about when it should actually be filled. Theft of prescription medications happens.
They should get a lock box and keep the key with them. Also, they should always report such activity to the police and get a written police report. This is similar to the second scenario. This is an awful experience and I would never want to add to the suffering that such a patient has already endured. But when this is just one of a series of attempts at obtaining an early refill, I again insist on seeing the police report and notifying the prescriber. State laws vary on who can actually pick up a controlled substance prescription for someone else.
Virtually all states require the person to show a valid photo ID. Yes, you can get a prescription refilled early, but it depends on certain factors. The main reason as to why some prescriptions are allowed to be refilled sooner is for protecting patients from non-adherence and taking medications incorrectly based on timing, frequency, duration, and even dosage.
According to CDC , around 3. This can make the overall treatment ineffective. Non-adherence to medications is dangerous, and the world health organization continuously emphasizes the importance of medication adherence throughout the entire treatment for a successful treatment procedure. So, because of these reasons, certain medications are allowed to be refilled early.
Patients will not have to miss out or run out of medications, thus causing non-adherence, especially if medications are supposed to be taken routinely. For example, a prescription given for a day supply can be refilled early as on the 12th or the 13th day. Again, the main reason to refill prescriptions early is to make sure one does not have to run out of medications. But still, not all medications can be refilled early because of specific safety reasons.
The main reason some medication can rarely be refilled early is to prevent the abuse and misuse of drugs, primarily controlled substances. If such controlled medications are not regulated, a patient can easily visit multiple pharmacies and ask for early refills to satisfy an addiction, or even to trade on the black market.
Even some insurance companies regulate the ability of a patient to get early refills for safety purposes. The insurance companies monitor such abilities to have early refills for different reasons. For example, a person taking medications to manage diabetes may get an early refill through specific insurance coverage options , over a person who regularly takes narcotics to manage their pain.
However, most insurance companies have certain exception options that give patients the ability to have early prescription refills, provided that these options cover the accepted reasons why a patient may need a prescription filled early. If your prescription has expired , then the situation is different from this one. The ability to get a prescription refilled early, other than controlled substances, usually comes with only a handful of situations and circumstances.
Even if there are certain situations where you can get early refills without the need to explain much, such as cases where your pharmacist knows you well enough or understands your situation, very often, this can help in obtaining early refills for genuinely needed or valid reasons.
Below are a few more highly valid and accepted reasons that will allow you to get early refills without any trouble. Pharmacies and pharmacists understand this situation can occur when it comes to traveling, extended vacation, or even work travel.
So, this is one of the ideal reasons you can use to get your prescriptions filled early. Explaining the situation helps convince the pharmacists to accept the reason. A pharmacist can refuse to fill prescriptions.
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