Services
For seniors
A list that grew over thirty years, assembled by six different prescribers, and probably never once looked at as a single thing.
At 65, coverage changes
The Ontario Drug Benefit program covers people 65 and over, and enrolment happens automatically — you do not apply. What most people are unsure about is the detail: when in the year it starts, what the deductible period means for them, and what happens to a private plan they already hold.
Those have real answers and they are worth getting rather than guessing. See coverage and costs.
If you were paying for something last month and it is covered this month, nobody sends a letter. Worth asking about anything you have been quietly paying for.
Is the list still the right list
A long list is usually the result of good decisions made one at a time by people who could not see each other’s work. That is not a criticism of anyone, and reviewing it is not an accusation.
What a review turns up is generally undramatic: something started for a reason that resolved years ago, two things doing one job, a dose nobody revisited, a schedule that assumes a day you do not have. See medication reviews. The funded one is called MedsCheck, it is free once a year, and taking three or more prescription medications for an ongoing condition is the usual way people qualify — not age.
Stopping something is a clinical decision too
Deprescribing is a real part of medicine rather than a cut-back. A pharmacist reviews and recommends; your prescriber decides, and nothing changes in the room.
Making a complicated week possible
Blister packs sort a week by day and by time, and they are as useful for the person keeping track of somebody else’s medications as for the person taking them.
Delivery exists for the weeks getting here is not realistic — weather, mobility, a hospital stay — and renewals are tracked so that running out is not the first sign that something lapsed.
If you are managing someone else’s medications
You are doing a demanding job that mostly goes unacknowledged, and you are welcome to do it here. A review is as much for you as for them: you are the person who needs an accurate list on one page.
Bring the actual containers, including the ones nobody is sure about. The bag-of-boxes approach works better than a list from memory, and nobody will comment on how many there are.
Common questions
Do I need to apply for the Ontario Drug Benefit?
No — it happens automatically. What is worth checking is the timing and what it means alongside any private plan you have.
Can everything be synchronised to one date?
Usually, and it turns several trips a month into one. Worth asking about explicitly, because it does not happen by itself.
I have trouble opening the bottles.
Say so and it is fixed — non-child-resistant caps are available on request, and blister packs sidestep the problem entirely.
Can somebody else pick up for me?
Yes, with the arrangement set up in advance rather than negotiated at the counter on the day.
Kind Clinic on the second floor is a family practice, and anything a review turns up goes to a prescriber there. Kind Clinic and Kind Pharmacy are separate businesses under common ownership. You can fill your prescription anywhere.
Kind Clinic →