The importance of having enough of your medication when you need it is undoubtedly critical. For those suffering from a chronic condition, taking the hassle out of filling a prescription can attribute to both time and cost savings.
And if you’re getting your prescriptions filled by Express Scripts® Pharmacy, it’s easy to sign up for automatic refills and get a 90-day supply of your medication, further reducing the risk of running out. However, as with most things in life, there is also a flip side. While auto refills are mostly beneficial, if your adherence to a regular schedule of medicine is off, the fallout can result in unnecessary waste and additional cost.
As a reminder, if you are not 100% compliant with your medication, taking it every time it is prescribed, you can be left with an additional supply that you do not need. Check your medication supply and if you have a high number of pills left over and you are due for your next auto refill, it can be beneficial to cancel that auto ship. While being part of the program actually allows for greater medical adherence and makes it easy to have prescriptions on hand, it can be equally wasteful and potentially dangerous with too much medication on hand.
Research indicates that storing leftover medications at home dramatically increases the risk of misuse by the patients or someone else in the home, and taking excessive doses puts you at risk for unexpected health complications.
Make it a habit to check your supply on a quarterly basis. If you find you have a surplus, you can cancel your automatic refill. Express Scripts will contact you via your preferred communication method before every automatic refill to tell you they’re getting ready to start working on your order. This gives you time to change the date or cancel the prescription if you no longer need your medication.
You can also visit the Express Scripts website and make the change by following these steps:
Log into mycbs.org/health.
Go to My Prescriptions and select prescriptions (this will bring you to the Express Scripts page).
Once on the ESI page, under Prescriptions, select the Automatic Refills page.
Select "stop automatic refills" beside the prescriptions to remove.
Express Scripts also reminds that staying on schedule with your medications can be as easy as prioritizing organization. It can be hard to judge how much medication you have left when your pills are still in their original bottle. A lack of organization can increase the odds you run out or take too much of your medication.
Get a basic pill organizer that allows you to sort your pills by both the day of the week and the time of day. Fill your pillbox on the same day each week, so it becomes part of your routine. This also lets you know if you have a week’s worth of medication (or not). Be sure to keep the original medication labels, as there’s important information there you may want to refer to later.
