An assembly for delivering medication to a patient has a cartridge loadable with a coiled strip of successively, physically linked medication-containing pouches. The cartridge is inserted into a delivery unit which has an advance mechanism which engages the strip and drives pouches successively out of the cartridge. Pouches are fed successively to an inspection mechanism and a separation station. At the inspection station indicia on successive pouches representing a medication schedule are inspected and compared and validated against a separately stored medication schedule recorded at the time the medication is packaged in the cartridge. A separation mechanism mounted at the separation station is used to separate a pouch at the leading end of the strip from the adjacent pouches. At a pouch exit, separated pouches are routed to a delivery zone.