Pharmacy and Therapeutics committee: What It Does and Why It Matters

When you get a prescription filled, someone somewhere made sure that drug was safe, effective, and worth the cost—and that’s the job of the Pharmacy and Therapeutics committee, a group of doctors, pharmacists, and other experts who decide which medications are approved for use in hospitals and health plans. Also known as P&T committee, it’s the silent gatekeeper behind every drug on your hospital’s shelf. This isn’t just bureaucracy—it’s a frontline defense against dangerous drugs, pricing abuse, and misinformation.

The Pharmacy and Therapeutics committee, a group of doctors, pharmacists, and other experts who decide which medications are approved for use in hospitals and health plans. Also known as P&T committee, it’s the silent gatekeeper behind every drug on your hospital’s shelf. doesn’t just pick drugs—it watches them. It tracks reports from MedWatch, the FDA’s system for collecting adverse events from drugs and medical devices, reviews data on counterfeit medications, fake pills and injections that contain toxic or inactive ingredients, and studies real-world side effects like those from generic medications, lower-cost versions of brand-name drugs that sometimes trigger unexpected reactions due to different inactive ingredients. If a drug causes more harm than good, or if a cheaper alternative works just as well, the committee makes the call to switch.

It’s not just about safety. The Pharmacy and Therapeutics committee also fights waste. When a new $10,000-a-month drug hits the market, the committee asks: Is this better than the $200 option we already have? They look at studies on biosimilars, highly similar versions of expensive biologic drugs that can cut costs by up to 70%, weigh the risks of statins and diabetes, how cholesterol drugs can slightly raise blood sugar in some patients, and decide whether to include GLP-1 agonists, weight-loss drugs that also help reverse fatty liver disease in formularies. Their decisions affect what you pay, what your doctor prescribes, and whether you even get access to life-changing treatments.

Behind every medication policy, every drug recall, every warning label, there’s a committee reviewing data no one else sees. They’re the ones who caught the rise in fake GLP-1 pens, flagged the dangers of mixing chemo with herbal supplements, and pushed for better insulin storage, guidelines to keep diabetes meds effective in hot climates or during travel. What you think is just a pill on a shelf? It’s the result of a dozen experts digging into real patient outcomes, supply chain risks, and hidden side effects.

Below, you’ll find real stories from the front lines: how counterfeit drugs are caught, why switching to generics can backfire, how heatwaves increase overdose risk, and how the FDA’s reporting system helps stop dangerous drugs before they hurt more people. These aren’t abstract policies—they’re life-or-death decisions made by people who spend their days reading between the lines of medical data. If you’ve ever wondered why some drugs are hard to get, or why your doctor changed your prescription, this is why.