We manage four relatives' prescriptions from one Walmart account. Here's how.

We've been on Walmart+ for years now, and most of our groceries and household items come through it. What we didn't expect is that it would become such a critical part of the way we look after the relatives we're caring for.

The part we lean on most is the family pharmacy account. When you're taking care of relatives, there are a lot of tasks to get done, and anything that saves time, energy or money is a big plus. One thing that has taken real stress off us is being able to manage their prescriptions from a phone, any hour of the day. We manage four relatives' medicines from it, next to our own. It shows us when a prescription is ready for a refill, lets us order it, and shows us when it has been filled. We can also ask Walmart to request the refill from the doctor through its own system. Then we get a notice that it's ready for delivery, and we schedule the delivery, to our porch or to theirs, the same day, free with the Walmart+ membership. When someone is sick we add the off-the-shelf things to the same order and it all arrives together, with no order minimum. One prescription can come with four bananas, all for free, even though a grocery order on its own would have to reach $35. We haven't found another pharmacy in town that gives us this much flexibility.

Caring for relatives means some very long days, and some days the relief is simply knowing it's on its way before we head over to help with other things. It replaces the drive in, the wait in line, and the second trip to hand it over. More than once, on the way home from the hospital, the prescriptions the doctor sent ahead were already delivered while we were still unpacking, after a single tap.

The other bonus is being able to send food and groceries when they don't feel like cooking. An order can be sent to a relative's address at checkout, so a week of meals lands on their porch without us in the car.

Two things to know before you set it up. You need a Walmart Pharmacy account, and so do they. Once their account exists, you link it to yours, and from then on they never have to log in again; you manage everything from your end. Your relative approves the link from inside their own account, which takes a minute and is the right safeguard. And type their address into the app first, because Walmart publishes no delivery map and the app is the only way to know whether a house outside town is in the zone. In our experience, Walmart currently delivers well past the city limits, all the way out to Woodbine and possibly farther.

New members get a 30-day free trial, and Walmart+ Assist is half price for anyone on SNAP, Medicaid, SSI or WIC.

There are plenty of other Walmart+ benefits we enjoy every day, such as discounted gas at Murphy USA and free flat-tire repairs, but we're keeping this post to the pharmacy and to sending medicine, food and groceries to the people we look after, because we believe that is where it will improve the most lives among our neighbors. We hope it makes yours a bit better too.