NCOIL adopts comp drug formulary

The National Council of Insurance Legislators voted to adopt a workers compensation drug formulary model, the council announced Wednesday.

Indiana Rep. Matt Lehman, 2020 president of the Manasquan, New Jersey-based NCOIL, introduced the formulary at the council’s 2019 annual meeting in Austin, with the purpose of requiring “the establishment of a drug formulary for use in a state’s workers’ compensation system in order to facilitate the safe and appropriate use of prescription drugs in the treatment of work-related injury and occupational disease,” said the council in a statement.

The initial draft of the NCOIL formulary model was based on Indiana’s formulary, in which the state adopted the Official Disability Guidelines Workers Compensation Drug Formulary Appendix A for drug reimbursement, which took effect March 2018. Indiana’s formulary also specifically prohibited reimbursing for drugs listed as “N” on the formulary except when used in medical emergencies.

Unlike Indiana’s formulary, however, the NCOIL model will provide states the option of either selecting a nationally recognized, evidence-based formulary, or developing their own formulary, NCOIL said in a statement.