This article defines a "drug formulary" as "a listing of drugs intended to include a large enough range of medications and sufficient information about them to enable health practitioners to prescribe treatment that is medically appropriate." For medical administrators responsible for every-growing pharmaceutical budgets, formularies are essential. The KDOC's drug formulary evolved in the late 1990s in response to a continually expanding pharmaceutical budget. In developing a model drug formulary, several disciplines provided input into the creation of a medications list that would provide an adequate selection of cost-effective treatments for various medical conditions present in KDOC's inmate population. Pharmacists, medical physicians, psychiatrists, optometrists, and nurses served as members of the Pharmacy and Therapeutics (P&T) Committee. This committee is charged with creating, monitoring, and revising the formulary based on the most up-to-date pharmaceutical, scientific, and FDA (Federal Drug Administration) information, along with cost. Medical providers are expected to prescribe from the available selection of formulary drugs; however, when medical providers believe that a formulary alternative is not a viable treatment, nonformulary medication may by requested by the provider. Some critics of formularies have hypothesized that decreasing the available pharmaceutical options would result in an increase in hospitalizations and off-site visits to specialty care providers due to illnesses not being adequately addressed by the formulary medications. Over the past 4 fiscal years, however, the KDOC has not experienced an increase in such costs, while the use of formularies has provided some control over drug costs. 4 notes and 2 figures