The riskiest week is the one right after discharge, and it's the week with the least support.
Someone comes home with eight boxes, a discharge summary written for another doctor, and no clear answer about whether the tablets they were taking before are still supposed to be taken. This is not a failure of attention on your part. Medication changes during a hospital stay are a well-documented source of confusion after it, and research finds that a substantial share of patients leave with at least one medicine they don't need.
The specific danger is duplication: a new drug that does the same job as an old one, with both still in the cupboard and nobody having said to stop. Getting this straight in the first 48 hours matters more than any reminder system you set up afterwards.
Ask while there is still someone in front of you who can answer. Once you're home it becomes a phone queue.
Put everything from the cupboard on one side of the table and everything from the discharge bag on the other. Work through both lists together and mark each old box as continue, stop, or unsure.
Physically remove the stopped ones from where the daily medicines live. Don't throw them away yet - put them in a separate bag in case a doctor asks - but get them out of reach of the person taking the daily doses.
Take the 'unsure' pile to your pharmacist. They will go through it with you, they do this all day, and it costs nothing.
Discharge regimens change. Something gets stopped at the follow-up, a dose gets adjusted, an antibiotic finishes. Don't build an elaborate permanent system in week one - build a simple one for seven days and expect to redo it.
A printed chart is genuinely better than an app here, because several people are likely to be involved and the schedule is changing. Anyone walking into the room can read a chart.
In the first week there is often more than one person helping - a spouse, a visiting daughter, a night attendant. This is exactly when doses get given twice or not at all, because each person assumes the other did it.
One shared written record, ticked as each dose is given, prevents almost all of it.
Worth saying plainly, because the wrong tool applied to the wrong problem wastes weeks:
Only the ones you've been explicitly told to continue. Assuming is how duplication happens. If nobody said, ring the pharmacist and ask - they can read the discharge summary back to you.
Several prescribers are involved, changes are made during the stay that aren't always explained on leaving, and the person going home is often tired and not absorbing much. The literature treats this transition as a known risk point.
Until the first follow-up appointment at least. Rebuild it after, because something will almost certainly have changed.
The current list, the stopped pile, and a note of anything that was difficult. A written list gets you a much better ten minutes than trying to recall it.
Discharge regimens are exactly the kind that get missed - new, complicated and unfamiliar. DailyDawa sends each dose on WhatsApp and tells a family member if one goes unanswered, which is most useful in precisely the weeks when nobody has the routine yet.