She'd been doing so until a year ago when she fell; family decided to have the AL home give her the meds. She's been very unhappy about this. Recently she's been taken off a few things she was on (a sleep aid, another vitamin, a gastro med) and her long-time GP thinks she is well able to handle the two AM and one PM meds (two for anxiety, one a vitamin). The home is now insisting that they have to give her a 'test' to see if she knows what the meds are for, when to take them, etc. We think she is well aware of these but think they may be demanding more info from her than is needed, as a ploy to keep charging her nearly $40/day for meds administration. She can be confused at times but her dr. and we (family) feel confident enough to want to try this. (We will count pills regularly to see whether she is taking the right dose.) She gets very unhappy and depressed to be told she can't take her of these meds and is especially unhappy about what it's costing to have others do this.
Question: what degree of testing is relevant or needed? Does anyone else have experience with an AL home resisting self-administering? FM has no diagnosis of dementia but we realize she is sometimes forgetful these days.
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What sort of test is the ALF proposing? If they're waiting for you to come up with it, I should pop your relative's meds in a pill minder, show her how to use it, then come back with it the next day and allow her to operate the pill minder in front of the facility's designated witnesses.
It is important that she can do this genuinely unaided, by the way. If she can't, you really don't want her handling her own anti-anxiety medication. If the idea offends her, compromise by leaving her in charge of the vitamins and "explain" that anti-anxiety medication is "controlled" and has to be kept in the nurses' station. Hem-hem.
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Best of luck!
You said in the past you would count her pills, but that does not let you know if she took them on schedule. My late FIL would put a days worth of pills in the chest pocket of his shirt. By the end of the day if his pocket was empty, he figured he had taken his pills. Problem was if he bent down to put on shoes, pick up the paper etc, one or more would fall out. Once we had his pills blister packed it was much safer, no pills missed or on the floor.
I would use a pill planner. They have AM and PM slots for each day. See how that works. I would not leave full bottles where she could get to them. Mom had a drawer in her kitchenette area that locked.
Where would she keep the medication if she is in charge of it herself? Is it stored in a cabinet in her bathroom? Locked in a drawer? What security measures do they have if left in her possession?