Prescribing and patient care indicators for drug use evaluation at primary healthcare centers in Indonesia

Primary healthcare centers play an important role as the basic healthcare providers for communities before referral to hospitals, making evaluations of rational use of drug in such facilities essential. The study evaluated rational drug use based on WHO core drug use indicators at primary healthcare centers in West Java, Indonesia by using a cross-sectional design. A sample of 540 prescriptions written in January-December 2019 at five primary healthcare centers was obtained to evaluate prescribing indicators. Patient care indicators were evaluated at two primary healthcare centers in Depok by interviewing and observing 120 respondents. The prescribing indicator analysis illustrated that 3.50 ± 0.98 medicines were prescribed per encounter. In total, 99.25% of drugs were prescribed using the generic name, antibiotics were prescribed in 15.12% of encounters, injectable drugs were prescribed in 0.31% of encounters and 97.83% of medicines were prescribed from the National Formulary. In the patient care analysis, the mean duration of the medical consultation was 3.8 ± 1.8 min, and the mean dispensing time was 3.6 ± 2.0 min. Drugs were dispensed in 98.3% ± 12.9% of encounters, drugs were adequately labeled in 98.8% ± 5.5% of encounters and patients were aware of the correct dosage in 68.8% ± 38.4% of cases. Patient age (p < 0.001; r = -0.511) and education level (p = 0.007; r = 0.346) were correlated with their knowledge of drug information. Drug use in primary healthcare centers needs to be improved, especially concerning physician prescriptions and consultations as well as pharmaceutical care.