A lifesaver for the caregiver who has to fill the organizer. Even with 31 days the time to refill seems to come so quickly. Weekly organizers were stressful to maintain since I don't live with my loved one. It is nice that you can take a day's compartment with you if you leave the house. It's easy to manage daily use even for someone with mild cognitive decline. I wish the flip tops held up better. In a year and a half I have two days where the flip tops broke off or hung by a thread. Read more
Excellent medicine box, 30 separate dated four compartment organizers. From #1 through #31. Making it easy to sort medications for morning, afternoon/lunch, dinner time and evening medications. Red on one end, green on the other. Place either color up to indicate bedding to take medication, flip to the other color to know you have taken that days meds. Strong plastic flip tops attached for each day. There is a tray area attached, to set one days med container, as you take them throughout the day. Quality is sturdy, plastic containers hold up well, after refilling month after month. Overall container for each day of meds, is very good, tiered design. Easy to use for adults who need reminders to take medication. For traveling, just pull out the numbered days you need to take with you. We always carry an extra day or two in case of delays. Read more
My husband has suffered a series of small strokes over the past 20 years or so he has significant diabetes). For most of that time, he has managed his own medication quite nicely. Over the course of the past couple of years he has had periods of time where he would forget a few does, take too many doses, or confuse the 'morning' row of compartments in his pill box with the 'evening' row. His blood sugar started fluctuating a lot more than before and since I work full time I couldn't be here to monitor and guide his medication-taking. When I found the MedCenter 31 Day Pill Organizer, I was impressed with the thought put into the design. (I also purchased the talking alarm/reminder separately.) It seemed to be exactly what we needed. Each day's pills would be in one box so he couldn't take pills from the wrong compartment. The talking alarm would remind him throughout the day not only to take a dose, but which dose he needed. And each reminder told him explicitly which dose so he could match that up with the correct compartment. The time and date displays help him a lot. With this system he doesn't really need them too much for medication purposes, but he does get a little fuzzy on what day it is and he likes to know decisively so this helps with that. It also helps me be sure he is on the right box. Each morning, i put his empty box red side up in the container and put out the new box in the little well designed for that purpose. The most telling thing for me is that HE is genuinely excited about how helpful this is for him. He was getting pretty nervous about not being able to keep his meds in order and now he feels like he is doing that. I expect to see a much better result the next time we go for labs. I also want to mention that the company has exemplary customer service. I purchased this item through Amazon and it was not the MedCenter company that sold it. When I received it, there were 2 boxes for Day 26. I contacted MedCenter as they do sell replacement boxes. They immediately offered to send a replacement box for free and it was here in 2 days. This customer care will stick with me as it is so unusual these days. A couple of small complaints I have to mention: - The covers on the compartments can be tough to open and this is hard for my husband with compromised strength and fine motor skills. - The boxes can be difficult to remove from the container because there isn't really enough 'finger room' around them to get a good grip. If he had to do this himself, we'd be in trouble. - It takes quite a bit of time to pour the meds at the beginning of the month (though I'm not sure how one would design around this) These are small things to live with and well outweighed by the benefit we are receiving from using this product. I am so glad I decided to purchase it. Read more
I have used these for years. I C originally got them from a medical conference in Las Vegas in early 2000. These are perfect for the amount of pills I take with the larger daily containers, they hold up very well, easy to keep track of the time, when and how much. This is my 3rd one. The containers are where they break down. But it takes a lot & very sturdy. Read more
Overall I would buy it again. There are a few issues. The solution is not perfect, but it was the best we found on the market for our needs. Patient experience: I bought this for my father who has struggled with his previous 4-times-a-day weekly pill case. This solved the problem he had with his *previous* pill case that was organized into a grid of rows of time-of-day, and columns or week day; M, T, W, Th, F, S, Su. The old case required him to get the day of the week right, as well as the time of day, and not become confused by the surrounding compartments when retrieving medications from the compartment. Another issue solved by this pill case is that sometimes when dumping out meds from his old case, another day's lid might come open mixing all the medicines together. The MedCenter 31 Day Pill Organizer only requires that he gets the right day (number) of the month which shows up on his watch. It simplified his previous routine. Now all he has to do is identify the right day of the month in the morning, pull that four compartment case out and set in the tray at the bottom. This way he did not having to rework through re-identifying what day of the week it was four times a day. It took a little repetition to get him to use the Greed/Red colors as intended for full/empty. But even if he forgot to return the empty container with the red side up, he figured it out the next day because he was only looking at the number of the month on his watch. He did have an issue with pulling the day's four compartment column out of the organizer as there is little room to get his fingers between the adjacent daily boxes. Furthermore most of the compartment lids were fairly tight requiring him to use a bottle opener to pry the lid open many times. Caregiver experience: The layout of this product is an array of f rows arranged in a stadium seating configuration. The rows however are 8 columns across. This is where the caregiver has to struggle more when filling out the compartments if you have medications that are only taken on certain days such as M,W,F,Sat for example. It's fine if everyday the patient takes the same medicine for the specific time of day all month long. But in my case, I had to remove all of the cases from the holder and arrange them in a calendar-like array on the table in front of me so I could repeat the same M, W, F, Sat deviations for a specific time of day without getting confused. I occasionally also struggled to open some of the compartment lids. Pros: Organization of the product good for memory challenged patients. Cons: Stadium arrangement of daily cases allows for little room to get a hold of the mini case for removal from the holder. Lids can be too tight sometimes to open without a tool. Complex for caregiver to fill out meds for the patient if medicine doses follow a week day oriented regiment with variance from day to day. Product Improvement Suggestions: Solve the problem of grasping the individual cases with a more ergonomic approach.Address the lid tightness issue without compromising the integrity of keeping pills intact. Arrange in 5 rows 7 columns across to allow for loading the holder to mimic a calendar month for the caregiver. Over all this is the best pill minder/container we found on the market for a patient who is struggling with navigating which medications to take when. We did not buy the compatible clock so I cannot review it. Read more
