Pill count checker

Count what is in the bottle, then check it against what should be there. A gap in either direction is worth knowing about: it is the cheapest adherence check there is, and it needs no app and no memory.

Why the count is worth doing

A pill count is the only adherence check that does not depend on remembering anything. The bottle knows. Whatever you believe about how consistent you have been, the number in there is the record, and it takes a minute to read.

It is also the check a pharmacist or a clinic will do, for exactly that reason. Doing it yourself first means you arrive at the appointment with the same information they are about to work from.

More left than expected

This is the common direction, and it means doses were missed. The useful part is not the number but the size of it: two spare pills is a rounding error, twenty is a pattern.

It matters clinically because a medication that was taken 70% of the time and did not work is a completely different situation from one that was taken faithfully and did not work — and only one of them is a reason to change the prescription. Turning the gap into a percentage, which is the form that conversation usually takes, is what the adherence rate calculator does.

Fewer left than expected

Worth taking seriously rather than shrugging at. The usual explanations are harmless: a dose dropped down the sink, a day when you took an extra by mistake, or a bottle that never contained quite what you assumed.

But it also means you will run out earlier than the label implies, and on a controlled medication it means you will hit the earliest refill date with nothing left. Either way the fix is the same: tell the pharmacy the real number rather than the one on the box.

Counting without counting

Nobody wants to tip out a bottle every fortnight. The alternative is to record the count once, when you open a new pack, and let the subtraction happen as you go — which is what Doz does when you log a dose, and what the write-up on running low covers doing with a pen on the label.

Common questions

How many pills should I have left?

Multiply the pills per dose by the doses per day, multiply that by the number of days since you started, and subtract from the quantity you began with. Starting 60 pills on a twice-daily schedule, after 14 days you should have 32 left.

What does it mean if I have more pills left than I should?

Doses were missed, and the surplus tells you roughly how many days worth. A couple of spare pills is noise; a fortnight of them is a pattern worth mentioning, because a medication that was not taken and a medication that did not work look identical on a chart.

How long will 180 pills twice a day last?

90 days, or about three months. Divide the quantity by the number of pills you take per day: 180 divided by 2 is 90 days.

Do pharmacies count your pills?

Pharmacies and clinics do sometimes run a pill count, particularly for controlled medications, because it is an objective check that does not rely on recall. Doing your own first means you are not surprised by the result.

One thing this cannot do

This is an arithmetic tool, not medical advice. It works out numbers from what you type in — it does not know your medication, your prescription, or what you should do if something goes wrong. Anything about changing a dose, spacing doses differently, or handling a missed dose is a question for your doctor or pharmacist.