Guide · Scope
A reminder is a prompt: 'Mrs. Lee, it's 9 o'clock — your pills are in the blue box.' The client (or family) manages the medication; your caregiver manages the clock. Administration is deciding, dosing, placing, injecting or applying medication — nursing work, reserved to licensed professionals in every state, sometimes delegable by a registered nurse under state delegation rules, never assumable by an agency on its own say-so.
'Medication management' sounds like a premium service and families ask for it by name. Put it on a non-medical price list and you have advertised a nursing service — outside your scope before the first visit. The safe vocabulary is reminders, observation ('note and report'), and a written escalation path when a client misses doses.
State personal-care rules draw this line explicitly — Texas's personal assistance rules, for example, bar attendants from tasks reserved to licensed professionals (26 TAC §558.404) and bound the rest through RN delegation. Your policies and procedures must draw the same line, because the surveyor will look for it there first.
Dataset pages behind this guide: Texas state page · the full 50-state dataset (checked October 22, 2026).
Guides are general; verdicts are specific. The license checker applies your state's rules to your service mix, and the cost calculator prices your opening from the same dataset this guide cites.
The free checkers give you the verdict and the number. The Kit gives you the working papers: your state's application packet walked through in filing order, the policies-and-procedures binder spec (what your binder must contain — never a boilerplate binder), the administrator self-audit, the insurance & bond spec sheet, the Medicaid gate map, the franchise-vs-independent 10-year worksheets, and the payroll-runway planner.
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