How often can I refill my child’s adhd prescription?

[Anonymous]

With the shortage, it is incredibly stressful waiting to refill until a day or two before we run out, not knowing if we’ll be able to find it, or if I’ll be able to reach my sons doctor quickly enough to get them to send it in if I do find it in stock somewhere.

How many days before a 30 day prescription is up can I refill my child’s prescription? There doesn’t seem to be a clear answer online. Will call my insurance as well.

[Anonymous]

I don't know the actual answer, but some of the strategies we use to get around this are:

1) schedule the quarterly med-check in as early as possible so that the next set of refill dates overlap with the previous prescription (ie, my previous prescription would have run out on January 16th, but our Telehealth appt was on January 9th so out next prescription started that day and we gained a week of wiggle room.

2) ask your doctor for paper prescriptions. that way you don't have to deal with getting in touch to resend the prescription to a different pharmacy, you just take the paper one there.

3) I skip a day or two a month (weekends, no school days, etc). So I'm slowly building up a small stockpile that covers us when we hit a month where we have delays getting a prescription filled.

[Anonymous]

With my insurance it’s 2 or 3 days.

[Anonymous]

My insurance will hold the prescription until they have 2 days left, which is challenging.

But with the start of the new year (Jan 1) I was somehow able to fill the prescription 6 days early, which was a huge relief. .

[Anonymous]

How are you even finding meds. I called over a dozen pharmacies and got nowhere

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:With the shortage, it is incredibly stressful waiting to refill until a day or two before we run out, not knowing if we’ll be able to find it, or if I’ll be able to reach my sons doctor quickly enough to get them to send it in if I do find it in stock somewhere.

How many days before a 30 day prescription is up can I refill my child’s prescription? There doesn’t seem to be a clear answer online. Will call my insurance as well.

You can ask the pharmacist when you pick up the medication, what is the earliest you can refill the prescription. I use Safeway and I never have a problem with refills. But I wonder if CVS or Walgreens prescriptions by mail would help you solve this problem? You may want to look into that.

[Anonymous]

Definitely get paper prescriptions. Before the shortage we had electronic prescriptions, but now we need to be able to shop around.

Call your insurance and see if name brand would be covered. For my plan, generic Vyvanse has a $10 copay and the name brand is $50. BUT the prescription needs to be written a specific way to get the name brand covered at the copay. So definitely ask if your child's med has a generic and name brand option.

[Anonymous]

Call around and ask different pharmacies. We've had good luck filling one month at cvs and the next month at safeway, they let you overlap a week. But of course that only works if they have it in stock.

We also need time to get thr pills to the school nurse, which is such a hassle and takes an extra day. Its a broken system.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Call around and ask different pharmacies. We've had good luck filling one month at cvs and the next month at safeway, they let you overlap a week. But of course that only works if they have it in stock.

We also need time to get thr pills to the school nurse, which is such a hassle and takes an extra day. Its a broken system.

It’s such a broken system. I understand it’s a controlled medication, but people who need it are suffering. It’s very difficult to watch my young child suffer.

Good to know about overlapping. I’ve had no luck at cvs.

To the PP who asked, I’m not in DC area, but have had some luck at smaller local pharmacies. Even that is getting harder to fill my son’s prescription though. The medication is simply on back order with no delivery dates even reported. It’s really upsetting that this is happening, but that’s a different post.

[Anonymous]

Op again. For anyone who’s interested, my insurance (UHC) said it’s when you’re 75% through the prior prescription- so on a 30 day prescription that would be 22.5 days. My pharmacy was saying 3 days prior (27 days) though.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Op again. For anyone who’s interested, my insurance (UHC) said it’s when you’re 75% through the prior prescription- so on a 30 day prescription that would be 22.5 days. My pharmacy was saying 3 days prior (27 days) though.

This is interesting. We’ve only ever been able to fill it 2 days before. The exception is mail order but then it’s maybe 7-10 days ahead for a 90 day supply. With delayed processing and shipping it’s not enough time. Sometimes we have to get emergency authorization for a few days from Walgreens or CVS.