New AHRQ-Funded Tool Aims to Guide Formulary Role in Drug Prescribing

A Prescription for Improving Drug Formulary Decision Making

New AHRQ-Funded Tool Aims to Guide Formulary Role in Drug Prescribing 

A new AHRQ-funded tool is designed to help decision-making by drug formulary committees at hospitals, health systems, and insurance companies based on an evaluation of drug evidence, efficacy, and therapeutic alternatives. Researchers from AHRQ’s University of Illinois Center for Education and Research on Therapeutics (CERTs) program note that while formularies have received much attention regarding cost containment, their role in guiding rational drug use could be enhanced by a more standardized critical evaluation of drugs proposed for formulary placement. The new tool, used at two U. S. teaching hospitals, consists of a six-domain checklist of 48 questions for evaluating drugs. The domains are: evidence of need (7 questions), efficacy (6), medication safety (6), misuse potential (7), cost issues (10), and decision-making process (12). CERTs researchers who applied the tool in the formulary of several hospitals and systems, say the checklist can facilitate more standardized and critical scrutiny of the evidence and therapeutic alternatives. Potential uses for the tool include: educating of new Pharmacy & Therapeutics committee members about new drug applications, guiding committee discussions of drugs proposed for formulary addition, and evaluating quality of committee decision-making to assess whether key questions were raised and addressed. The checklist is available in the article, “A Prescription for Improving Drug Formulary Decision-Making,” published in PLoS Medicine on May 22. Select to access the article on PubMed.®

A Prescription for Improving Drug Formulary Decision Making