[Are the drug prescription quality indicators of the World Health Organization still valid?].

The scope of this article is to analyze the drug prescription quality indicators proposed by the World Health Organization in 1993 and suggest new indicators attuned to the new profile of illness of the population. For this purpose, a cross-sectional study was conducted by means of personal interviews and prescription analysis among 320 patients who were attended at Strategic Family Health Units located in a Brazilian municipality in the state of Rio Grande do Sul. The users were recruited by the consecutive nonprobabilistic sampling method. In accordance with the drug prescription quality indicators of the World Health Organization, the prescriptions can be considered adequate. However, analysis of those indicators shows that they may currently be inappropriate. Therefore, new indicators were created. Using the new, easily quantifiable and straightforward indicators proposed, it was possible to detect the problems in a drug prescription with a view to taking corrective action.