As part of quality assessment of hospital drug handling routines we conducted an audit of medical records in four major hospitals in order to investigate to what extent the prescriptions were correctly written, i.e. to what extent the name of the drug, dosage form, strength, administration route, dosage and dosage interval were given in the records. Only 20% of the prescriptions were given correctly. The failure rate was highest for route of administration and dosage intervals. According to a questionnaire, physicians, nurses and pharmacists were in favour of audits of this type recommended by the Swedish Medical Quality Council, believing that they will lead to improvement in the quality of the drug handling routines. Safe such routines are a leadership matter. It is also timely to implement computerised physician order entry systems. Such systems can form the basis for decision support, for example in dosage adjustments in relation to age and renal function, and the identification of drug interactions. This set-up would lead to improvement in the quality of health care provided in hospitals.