Thank you for that correction! Bad assumption on my part.
Has anyone managed prescription medication needs for their older children while away at college? Any suggestions or advice? I’m beginning to think about this for S25 and his ADHD medication. The general suggestion I’ve heard is to get the 90 day supply from the mail order pharmacy and overnight (if possible) to said college. Is this really the best way?
This is going to be specific to your providing physician and the state the OOS college is in. Many medications are not able to be sent through the mail. You should contact your student’s physician and discuss it with them.
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S23 is on Vyvanse. His prescriber is able to send from the midwest to NY directly the pharmacy at his college. I email script refill reminders directly to his prescriber (with his permission).
Check with his prescriber.
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I know that ADHD meds may have different rules, but we use Amazon pharmacy for our daughters acne medicine and birth control pills. She gets a 90 day supply and she picks them up at the mail office at school.
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Like someone else said, depends on the state and your insurance. My insurance won’t do 90 days supply, but even if they did, my older kid goes to school in MA - in MA you can only get 30 days at once and you can only get them when you are at day 28. Our doctor in VA cannot prescribe into MA, so my son sees someone at the health center every month who writes him a prescription. (This appears to be state specific - the same son was in NY for the summer and our doctor in VA was able to send a prescription to a pharmacy in NY.)
So all this to say - it depends. I called the health center once we knew where my older son was going to school and they were very helpful with explaining how most students manage meds.
(Also, what I’ve learned is the MA is a real pain in the behind for ADHD meds.)
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We were lucky that D22 stayed in state so our amazing mail order pharmacy through her speciality clinic could mail her medications directly to her campus address. If D25 goes out of state we will have to figure out a plan. Right now I’m thinking we’ll have the medications sent to us, then I mail them to her. None of her meds are ‘controlled’ in anyway, so I think this would work. Unfortunately our pharmacy can’t mail out of state.
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Eeek! Okay, glad I asked! His EDII is in Massachusetts. This school doesn’t have an on campus pharmacy but a local one they recommend is about a mile away.
Sounds like it will be a “it depends” scenario depending on where he ends up. Good to know all the potential particulars from the different replies though!
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I’ve dealt with this a ton for ADHD meds - oos to a MA boarding school in high school, oos to NOLA for college, oos to Oregon.
We used a pharmacist in MA that was great and somewhat easy (highly recommend trying to find a good independent pharmacy over a big box one). Sometimes refills can trip you up and it won’t be seamless. We did mail order in NOLA (she used the college health insurance). It mostly worked, but again, we had the occasional hiccup with refills. It’s a pain, you’ll have to wrangle with insurance. Now, I get meds sent locally and mail them, even the controlled ones (not supposed to but it’s an easier scenario for our family).
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Yeah, S22’s school doesn’t have a pharmacy, but their doctors and nurse practitioners can prescribe (I think other New England states have reciprocity in MA, but otherwise doctors from out of state can’t prescribe there). So the medical staff from the health center send the Rx to CVS or whatever. The OTHER problem is how close to the end of your Rx Massachusetts requires you to be - because they make you be so close to running out, you have to be really precise with getting prescriptions sent exactly on time and if the pharmacies are out of meds you may not have time to wait for them to restock - the nurse practitioner who my son sees at the campus health center ends up calling around all over to see who has meds on any given day - that’s great customer service from him, but it shouldn’t have to be that way.
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So D25 decided to apply to some reachy reach schools over break. I completely support her ‘taking her shot’, but now I have to complete the CSS Profile! 
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Back to school today. D25 is just done. She does not want to go. She’s there for 3 days and then has to go to a scholarship thing the end of the week. I’m not looking forward to the grind either.
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My son doesn’t return until tomorrow but it’s highly likely he’ll have a snow day given how much we are getting right now.
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I feel this. My S25 is just DONE. He managed a 4.2 first semester and then asked me if he gets straights Cs this semester if colleges will care. It’s going to be a very long 5 months.
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We’re in the same boat with a kid being over school. S25 managed to get straight A’s in the fall but his motivation is nil right now. He goes back tomorrow, and I asked him to please just get A’s and B’s this semester. I really want to dial back my hounding, but his only interest is socializing right now. The girl he took to his winter formal is now officially his girlfriend. His first girlfriend. And his primary interest in hanging out with her and his friends constantly. I’m happy that he’s finally socializing more (more in the last month than he’s done in the previous 3 1/2 years of high school), but it means he cares very little about school.
I’m also stressing about the ADHD medication thing. Right now we can only get a 30 day supply at a time. I worry about S25 staying on top of picking up his meds every month, particularly since he isn’t taking a car to college. I’m going to talk with his psychiatrist when we meet last this month to see what advice he has, even though we’ll have to get medication managed by someone else when he leaves for college. At least I have 8 months to freak out about it!
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I can only speak to my oldest son and his campus, but he has an on-campus pharmacy where students can pick up medications as part of the health center. There is also a CVS right next to campus so no matter which side of campus they are on they have easy access to a pharmacy. I’m sure most Universities are the same. Hope that eases your mind at least in terms of access to pharmacy.
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No pharmacy on campus at Rose-Hulman and my understanding is that the only pharmacies are driving distance. But he will have to figure out a way to get there! Thankfully I hear that the kids are good about driving each other places, but I worry that he’ll put off getting his meds on time. Right now I remind him to email the psychiatrist every month when he’s running low on meds, but I guess the next step is for him to start picking them up himself. So much adulting we need to work on in the next few months!
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Rose-Hulman has a section about ADHD meds on their health center page:
strike that, that’s just to get the RX, but they talk about how to get the RX. Kind of crazy they expect kids to spend money on Ubers to disclose medical info to other kids to get rides. I mean kids get sick and need RX, kids have maintenance meds. That’s a negative for me for the college experience I’ll be honest.
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Are you comfortable joining the parent Facebook page of the college, and asking other parents how they handle it?
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No suggestion on how to get to the pharmacy, that stinks that there isn’t anything closer. But you know that your son is certainly not the only one in this boat. At S22’s school the practitioners in the health center are really really well versed in how to make prescriptions happen for students. And yes, when the walkable pharmacies are out of meds (which happens with some frequency) he ends up having to uber or bum a ride from a friend and it stinks, but is doable.
My reason for commenting though, is the scheduling bit of this. Suggest to him that he might want to set a recurring calendar appointment - both for when to call to request an Rx refill, and then a day later or whatever to remind him to go get it. It sounds a little much, but they get busy and distracted and then of course have ADHD on top of that which makes the busy/distracted worse. My kid uses his calendar and reminders for everything (which he didn’t do in HS, this is a new since college way of planning for him) and it really seems to help.
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