The Division of Workers’ Compensation invites interested members of the public to discuss the adoption and implementation of a drug formulary. The meeting is scheduled from 10 a.m. until noon on Wednesday, February 17, in the auditorium of the Elihu Harris State Office Building, 1515 Clay Street, Oakland, CA 94612.

At its most basic level, a formulary is a list of medicines. Traditionally, a formulary contained a collection of formulas for the compounding and testing of medication (a resource closer to what would be referred to as a pharmacopoeia today). Today, the main function of a prescription formulary is to specify particular medications that are approved to be prescribed at a particular hospital, in a particular health system, or under a particular health insurance policy. The development of prescription formularies is based on evaluations of efficacy, safety, and cost-effectiveness of drugs. Depending on the individual formulary, it may also contain additional clinical information, such as side effects, contraindications, and doses.

Assembly Bill 1124, which became effective January 1, 2016, requires the adoption of a workers’ compensation formulary by July 1, 2017. The overarching goal of the formulary and related rules is to expeditiously provide high quality evidence-based care to injured workers while minimizing administrative burden and cost. DWC will facilitate public discussion on how best to achieve the goal, including the following:

1) Design of the formulary (how to maximize evidence-based drug selection and transparency)
2) Integration of the formulary with existing Medical Treatment Utilization Schedule
3) Adoption of rules to improve the efficiency of utilization review, including ways to reduce the need for elevated utilization review and independent medical review

A Newsline will be issued in the near future to announce the posting of an agenda and background material on the DWC Forum.