April and May formulary changes: 2017 Medicare Part D drug lists now updated with 283 new prescription drugs

As you may know, Medicare Part D prescription drug plans can update their plan formularies or drug lists throughout the plan year and in the past two months, 283 new prescription medications have been added to many drug plans.

The April 2017 formulary data released by the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) included 380 new national drug codes (NDCs*) representing 250 drugs.

The May 2017 CMS formulary data included 43 new drug codes (NDCs) representing 33 drugs.

So how can I see if my Medicare Part D plan added any new prescription drugs?
Both our Formulary Browser (you can view all the drugs covered by a single Medicare prescription drug plan) and our the drug finder Drug Finder (you can view all the Medicare drug plans covering a single drug) have been updated with the 283 drugs found in the April and May 2017 Medicare Part D formulary data.

Again, details of the Spring 2017 formulary updated are summarized in our April 2017 and May 2017 articles. Both articles include example links to illustrate the variations in coverage between Medicare Part D plans.

You can also browse through a summary of changes to popular Medicare drugs found in our Monthly Formulary Change articles.

* What is an NDC or National Drug Code?
The national drug code or NDC uniquely identifies a particular drug, manufacturer, strength, and packaging combination. The NDC is often shown on your prescription bottle as an 11-digit code (see the charts below) or could be formatted as 00000-0000-00 where the first set of numbers identifies the manufacturer, the second set of number identifies the product and strength, and the third set of numbers identifies the packaging.