Wellness Med Care

Medication supply calculator

Running out of a medication over a weekend or on vacation is an avoidable problem. This works out your run-out date and a sensible day to request the refill.

Tablets, capsules, or doses on hand or being picked up.
e.g. 2 for one tablet twice a day, 0.5 for half a tablet daily.
Today, or the pickup date.
How far ahead you want the reminder. 7 covers most pharmacy and prior-auth delays.

Arithmetic only. Nothing about your medication is sent or stored.

Why the lead time matters

Refills fail for boring, predictable reasons, and all of them consume days:

  • The prescription has no refills left and the prescriber's office takes 2-3 business days to respond
  • The insurance requires a new prior authorization at the start of a plan year
  • The pharmacy is out of stock and has to order it
  • The refill lands on a holiday weekend

A week of lead time absorbs nearly all of this. For a medication where missing days matters, ask your pharmacy about automatic refills and medication synchronization - most offer both, and syncing everything to one pickup date is one of the better arguments for using a single pharmacy.

The 90-day question

If you refill the same maintenance medication every month, ask your prescriber whether a 90-day supply is appropriate and ask your plan what it costs - 90-day fills are often cheaper per dose, and they cut the number of chances per year for a refill to go wrong from twelve to four.

Tracking what you actually take, including over-the-counter items, is a separate and more important habit - the medication list tracker is the sheet for that.

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