Waiting to Refill Medications can Harm the Heart
Waiting even one day to fill a blood thinner prescription is dangerous after heart stent surgery.
New research shows heart stent patients who waited a day or more to fill their prescription for Plavix (blood thinner medication) are twice as likely to suffer from a heart attack or death in the months following the procedure. Yet, one in six patients did not fill their prescription on the day they were discharged. Instead, they waited an average of three days to fill their prescription.
The study calculated 16.3% of heart stent patients waited a day to fill their blood thinners while 2.2% of them never even fill it. Of the people who waited a day or more to fill their prescription, 14.2% of them had a risk of heart attack or death. It is almost double the 7.9% risk for those who fill their prescription on the day of discharge.
Most of the time, the patients who forget to fill their prescriptions are older and have other medications to take. They may prefer to fill some prescriptions over others because they do not realize the importance of all of them.
The best solution to this problem is to help patients transition from being an inpatient to an outpatient. By teaching them the importance of their medication before patients are discharged from the hospital, the less likely they are to procrastinate filling their prescription.
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