Explication and Standardization of Ongoing Hospital Formulary in a Tertiary Care Referral Hospital, Perinthalmanna, Kerala

Background: The important motive for creating a formulary is to set standards for great practice, merchandising high quality evidence-based prescribing, consequently, reduce the variant in degree of treatment furnished to the patients and controlling drug cost. Addition of drug to formulary is based on measures like safety, efficacy, quality and including drugs that are economically available for all types of patients. Routine therapeutic class review is necessary to standardize the formulary. Reviewing and evaluating all the therapeutic class of drugs and a new drug having an advantage over the current medicine is analyzed and included in the formulary. On the whole, the formulary helps to improve therapeutic outcome in a standardized manner and guides health care professionals in the rational prescription of drugs. Materials and Methods: This study is a prospective study. The 4th edition was prepared by formulating a drug list that was standardized according to the WHO guidelines. Then the prepared formulary was compared with WHO 2019 and NLEM 2015. Preparation of a new edition was notified prior, and a well-prepared questionnaire was distributed among the physicians and other health care providers for their opinion and feedbacks. Results: While comparing the prepared formulary with NLEM and WHO, we found that a greater number of drugs were included in the prepared hospital formulary which reflects the advanced clinical set up of the hospital. Conclusion: The study thus proves that timely standardization of formulary is essential for providing evidence-based medicine. A copy of the newly prepared formulary was circulated among different departments.