Medication Management

What is medication management?

Medication management includes getting a prescription, having follow-up appointments to monitor your symptoms, and ensuring you’re not at risk for side effects.

Though medication management is a term primarily used by behavioral health specialists when prescribing psychiatric medicines, you may need medication management for other reasons.

Why would I need medication management?

These are the three primary reasons for medication management:

Getting the most effective psychiatric medicine

When you have an acute infection and get a medication like an antibiotic, you go home, take all the medicine, and as long as you feel better, you seldom go back to the doctor. By comparison, medication management for behavioral health symptoms involves regular follow-up appointments because that’s the only way to be sure you get the medication that works best for you.

Psychiatric medications are complex because there are numerous medicines for each mental health condition and each one works differently. That means the first one you try may not do the best job of improving your symptoms. Then your provider may increase the dose or prescribe a different medicine.

Monitoring your health and ensuring you have the right medication at the lowest possible dose can only be done with routine medication management appointments.

Preventing side effects

All medications, whether for your mental or physical health, have active ingredients that can cause side effects. Watching for potential health problems is a crucial part of medication management.

Avoiding drug interactions

Prescription drugs, over-the-counter medications, and herbal medicines can all interact with one another. As a result, one drug may affect the action of another, either reducing or increasing its effectiveness. Both are dangerous for your health.

If you take multiple medications, called polypharmacy, your Leading MDs provider can evaluate all your medications (including those prescribed by other doctors) and make sure you’re not at risk for interactions.

What happens during medication management appointments?

You can schedule a one-time appointment to review multiple medications for interactions. But if you need psychiatric medications, your medication management doesn’t start until your provider completes a psychiatric evaluation, determines your diagnosis, and decides if medications may improve your symptoms.

After getting your first prescription, your provider schedules ongoing medication management appointments to follow your progress and determine if they need to change your dose or prescribe a new medication.

Call Leading MDs or use online booking to learn if you need medication management.