What is the Pharmacy and Therapeutics Society?
It is a national organization of medical professionals, insurance executives and others concerned with the quality and cost of health care. The society promotes good practices on the part of doctors, pharmacists and others who create formularies and drug lists for hospitals, health plans, and other organizations.
The society formed a 2008 task force to address the quality and safety of medications. What are some of its findings?
We have not published findings, but based on the findings of other groups, we joined others in successfully lobbying for Medicare support of ePrescribing, which is a major step forward for patient safety.
You have a Master of Public Health from the University of California at Berkeley in maternal and child health. How much attention has been paid to the field in terms of new drug development and trials?
The pediatric market is quite small since most children are healthy and suffer only from minor acute illness. This is of course a testimony to the public health efforts and progress we have made in sanitation, safe water, good nutrition and the use of vaccines. Many new medications are not studied well enough in children, and this leaves a big gap in the care of children with rare or serious chronic diseases.
An immediate past president said at the society’s annual meeting, “At the end of the year, a minimum wage worker purchasing health insurance for his or her family of four would not have a nickel left over to buy food.” How does your society help change this problem?
By promoting the rigorous use of the medical evidence, we hope to enable pharmacy and therapeutics committees to provide formularies and clinical programs that promote appropriate use of generic medications, which are often the best therapy at the lowest price.
How resistant is the medical community to pharmacy and therapeutics committees?
Most of the clinical community welcomes their activities since they promote the involvement of community physicians and pharmacists in making formulary and benefit decisions. Some physicians may feel that formularies and related clinical programs are an intrusion on the independence of their practice, but we hope that we can help them realize the value of the P&T process in assessing the medical evidence.
Your society’s Web site says the pharmacy and therapeutics “process” is dynamic in the area of evaluating drugs. Does your organization hope to make this evaluation process shorter so new drugs are less expensive to bring to the market?
Our goal is to improve the process by which managed care companies and others build their formularies and pharmacy benefits. The process by which new drugs are approved and brought to market belongs to the Food and Drug Administration.
