Short answer: Keep a single list that you own, not one per doctor. For every prescription, over-the-counter medicine and supplement, note the name, dose, when you take it, who prescribed it, why and when you started. Update it whenever anything starts, stops or changes, and show it at every visit. Each MyChart account shows what its health system has on record, so combine your lists in one place, such as PatientPower (beyondmychart.com), and ask a pharmacist promptly about anything that looks doubled.
Make one list the master copy, keep it with you, and bring it to every appointment with every clinician. MedlinePlus, from the National Library of Medicine, notes that people who take medicines prescribed by more than one provider are more likely to have problems, because one provider may not know about medicines another provider has given you, and that you may be prescribed different medicines for the same problem. A single list that travels with you helps close that gap.
The federal guides agree on the basics. The FDA's My Medicine Record asks you to enter all prescription medicines, including samples, and all over-the-counter medicines and dietary supplements, and to share the record with your doctors, pharmacists or other health professionals at all your visits. The National Institute on Aging suggests showing the list to all your health care providers, including physical therapists and dentists, and keeping one copy at home and one in your wallet or purse.
The table below draws on the FDA's My Medicine Record, AHRQ's medicine wallet card and the NIA's advice. You do not need every row on day one; start with name, dose, who prescribed it and any allergies or bad reactions, and fill in the rest at your next pharmacy visit or appointment. The NIA notes that your doctor and pharmacist should have an up-to-date list of your allergies.
| What to write down | Example of what to note | Which guide asks for it |
|---|---|---|
| Name | Brand and generic name for a prescription; name and active ingredient for an over-the-counter product | FDA My Medicine Record |
| Dose (how much) | The dose you were told to use, and how many pills that is if the strength differs (for example '40 mg; two 20 mg pills') | FDA My Medicine Record; AHRQ wallet card; NIA |
| How and when you take it | Time of day, with or without food, or 'when needed' for something you use only sometimes | FDA My Medicine Record; NIA |
| Who prescribed or recommended it | The doctor, nurse or pharmacist, and how to contact them | FDA My Medicine Record; NIA (for prescriptions) |
| Why you take it | The reason, such as the condition it was prescribed for | FDA My Medicine Record; AHRQ wallet card; NIA (for prescriptions) |
| What it looks like | Color, shape, size and any markings or number printed on the pill; a generic version may look different from the brand | FDA My Medicine Record; AHRQ (color); NIA (tell your medicines apart) |
| Start date (and stop date if it is for a set time) | The date you began, and the planned end date for a short course | FDA My Medicine Record; AHRQ wallet card |
| Supplements and over-the-counter medicines | Vitamins, minerals, herbals, and products such as pain relievers, antacids, allergy, cold or sleep medicines, even ones you use only occasionally | FDA My Medicine Record; AHRQ; MedlinePlus |
| Allergies and bad reactions | Any medicine, supplement or other product you have had a problem with, and what happened | FDA My Medicine Record; AHRQ wallet card |
The FDA's My Medicine Record says to review and update your record when you stop or start a medicine or dietary supplement, when you make a change in anything you use, and when you visit your doctor, pharmacist or another health professional. AHRQ's Your Medicine guide adds: add new medicines when you start something new or when a dose changes, and make a copy of your list for a family member or friend.
A practical habit is to update the list before you leave the pharmacy counter or the exam room, while the details are in front of you, and to put the date of the last update at the top so anyone reading it knows how current it is. The FDA form has a line for exactly that: these are my medicines as of a date you enter.
Each MyChart account shows the medication list that its health system keeps. Epic's MyChart site says you can review your medication list and instructions for taking each medication, report medications you are no longer taking, manage your pharmacies and request refills. Epic's site also says MyChart's Happy Together feature can show information from healthcare organizations at which you have received care in a single view, including medications.
What MyChart cannot know is what it was never told: a prescription from a practice that uses a different system, a supplement you bought yourself, or a dose a doctor changed at a visit that has not reached that health system's record. That is why a list built only from one portal can be incomplete, and why a list combined from several portals can show the same medicine more than once. For the wider job of combining records, see how to organize MyChart records from multiple providers.
If you connect MyChart to an app, the app can receive the medicines that health system releases to apps. When you connect MyChart to PatientPower (its Epic MyChart connection is live, approved for use on 16 September 2026; not an Epic endorsement), medications are one of the categories it asks for, and they arrive in your medications list. What actually arrives depends on what your health system makes available to apps and what you approve on its sign-in screen. Each record shows where it came from and when it was last synced, so you can tell which health system a medication entry came from.
When you combine lists from several doctors, the same medicine can appear more than once, or two lists can disagree. Clinicians call the process of comparing medication lists and resolving differences medication reconciliation, and the decisions belong to your clinicians and pharmacist. Your job is to spot the differences and bring them to someone who can decide. HealthIT.gov's Get It, Check It, Use It guide lists a missed medication or allergy as one of the common errors to look for when you check your health record. MedlinePlus advises asking your provider whether you still need all of the medicines on your list and whether any dosages should be changed.
Do not stop, skip or change a medicine because two lists disagree. MedlinePlus says not to stop taking any medicine unless your provider tells you to, and the NIA says to take a prescription medicine until it is finished or your doctor says it is all right to stop. If two entries might mean you are taking the same medicine twice, call your pharmacist or prescriber now rather than waiting for your next visit; the NIA says to call your doctor right away if you have any problems with your medicines.
Pay particular attention to active ingredients. The NIA advises learning which active ingredients are in your prescription drugs, over-the-counter medicines and supplements so that you do not take more than one that contains the same active ingredient. Its example is a cough syrup containing acetaminophen taken at the same time as a pain reliever that also contains it. Two products with different names, from different prescribers or from the pharmacy shelf, can share an ingredient.
| What you see | Common reason | What to do |
|---|---|---|
| The same medicine listed twice under different names | One entry may use the brand name and one the generic name, or you may really have two bottles from two prescribers or pharmacies | Check whether you have two bottles and are taking both. Ask your pharmacist promptly whether they contain the same active ingredient, and merge them into one entry with both names only after the pharmacist confirms they are the same product and you should be taking only one |
| The same medicine at two different doses | One record is older, a doctor changed the dose, or both are right because you take two strengths together | Ask the prescriber or pharmacist which dose or doses are current; mark an entry as history only after they confirm it is no longer used |
| Two different medicines for what looks like the same problem | Two doctors each prescribed something, or your condition is treated with more than one medicine on purpose | Show both to each prescriber or your pharmacist promptly, and do not stop either on your own; MedlinePlus says not to stop a medicine unless your provider tells you to |
| A medicine on a portal that you no longer take | It was stopped but the record was not updated, or you stopped it yourself | Tell that health system; MyChart lets you report medications you are no longer taking. If you stopped it yourself, tell the prescriber, not only the portal |
| A pill that looks different after a refill | A different manufacturer's generic version, or a different medicine | Ask your pharmacist to confirm what it is before taking it; the NIA advises checking the label before you leave the pharmacy and, if it does not have your name and your doctor's directions, not taking it and talking with the pharmacist. Do not add it to your list as a new medicine until they confirm. AHRQ notes a generic may differ in color but has the same active ingredient |
| A medicine you take that is on no portal | Bought over the counter, a supplement, or prescribed by a provider outside that system | Add it to your own list yourself |
Bring the list to every appointment, not only to the doctor who prescribed the most. MedlinePlus says to give all of your providers a copy of your medicine list, to discuss the list with your provider each time you have an appointment, and to bring it with you if you have a hospital stay. AHRQ's guide suggests trying to use the same pharmacy so all your prescription records are in one place, and the NIA suggests asking your pharmacist whether there is a patient profile you can fill out so the pharmacy knows everything you take. If you cannot use just one pharmacy, the NIA suggests sharing your list with the pharmacist at each location when you drop off a prescription.
When a doctor adds something new, ask an important question when several people prescribe for you. AHRQ's guide puts it as: does this new prescription mean I should stop taking other medicines? The FDA's form asks: will this take the place of anything else I am using? Write the answer on your list before you leave.
Paper still works. Keep a printed copy in your wallet, give a copy to someone you trust, and write down questions about entries you are unsure of. AHRQ suggests writing questions down ahead of time and bringing them to your appointment, and MedlinePlus suggests making a list of the questions and concerns you want to talk about.
PatientPower is an independent personal health record app at beyondmychart.com. These are the medication tools its features page describes today.
Medications and supplements: add prescriptions and over-the-counter supplements with dose, frequency, prescriber and reason, and, for medicines you take every day, tap Log dose to build a streak. Inactive medications stay in your history but stop counting against your streak, so a stopped medicine is kept as a record rather than deleted. Snap a prescription label or supplement bottle: the camera reads the name, dose and instructions and saves them to your vault; check the saved entry against the label. A Vitamin Cabinet holds your supplement stack.
From MyChart: PatientPower's Epic MyChart connection is live. It was approved for use on 16 September 2026, and you can connect MyChart today for each health system you use that runs Epic MyChart and lets patients connect apps (Epic's directory lists several Kaiser Permanente regions), so medications from each connected health system come into the same list. What arrives depends on what each health system releases and what you approve, so one health system may send fewer categories than another. That approval does not mean Epic endorses PatientPower. For a provider outside MyChart, you can photograph a prescription label or supplement bottle, or type the medicine in.
To take it with you: the one-page Summary shows your active medications, allergies and conditions; you can print a two-page Visit Packet; and the printable Emergency Card lists your current medications. To share it: choose a practitioner in Who Can See My Records and tick the categories they can see, such as medications, and for how long, or send a read-only link to a clinician who does not use PatientPower. You can revoke either at any time.
PatientPower does not merge duplicate medicines for you or decide which entry is right; you compare entries and confirm with your clinician or pharmacist. Records you connect may be incomplete, delayed or contain errors, so verify important details with your care team. If a health system's record is wrong, ask that health system to correct it, because the next sync will bring the same entry back. For the same reason, a change or inactive mark you make to an entry that came from MyChart may be reset the next time that health system syncs; record your clarification in your own entry as well. PatientPower is for education and organization; it does not diagnose conditions and is not medical advice.
Privacy: PatientPower's privacy policy says it accesses only what you authorize, never sells your health information, never uses it for advertising, and lets you export or delete your data and revoke access at any time. MyChart and Epic are trademarks of Epic Systems Corporation; PatientPower is an independent app and is not affiliated with or endorsed by Epic.
Related: How to organize MyChart records from multiple providers · Connect your Epic MyChart records to PatientPower · What to use alongside MyChart.
Keep one master list you own, not one per doctor. Write down every prescription, over-the-counter medicine and supplement with its name, dose, when you take it, who prescribed it, why and when you started, update it whenever anything changes, and show it at every visit.
The FDA's My Medicine Record asks for each medicine's name, what it looks like, how much, how and when you use it, start and stop dates, why you use it and who told you to use it, plus allergies or problems you have had. AHRQ's wallet card covers many of the same items. Include vitamins, herbals and over-the-counter medicines too, even ones you use only sometimes.
Yes. The FDA asks you to enter all over-the-counter medicines and dietary supplements, including vitamins, minerals and herbals, whether you use them all the time or only some of the time. MedlinePlus also says your list should include vitamins, supplements and herbal products.
MyChart shows the medication list each health system keeps, lets you report medications you are no longer taking and request refills, and its Happy Together feature can show information from several organizations where you have received care in one view. It may still miss providers that do not take part or do not use MyChart, and supplements you buy yourself, so keep your own combined list as well.
Ask the prescriber or your pharmacist which dose or doses are current before changing anything; sometimes both are right because you take two strengths together. Do not stop or change a medicine on your own because two lists disagree; MedlinePlus says not to stop a medicine unless your provider tells you to. If you might be taking the same medicine twice, call your pharmacist or prescriber now rather than waiting for a visit.
Connect each MyChart account to a personal health record app you choose, if your health system lets patients connect apps. In PatientPower, whose Epic MyChart connection is live (approved for use on 16 September 2026; not an Epic endorsement), medications from each connected health system arrive in your medications list, each showing where it came from; what arrives depends on what each health system releases and what you approve. Add medicines from other providers by photographing a label or typing them in.
No. PatientPower is an independent app and is not affiliated with or endorsed by Epic. Its Epic MyChart connection was approved for use on 16 September 2026, which does not mean Epic endorses it. Keep using MyChart for refills and messages at each health system.