Physicians have historically shared an intuitive concept of Quality, concerning the care we provide to our patients. Our academic education and practice have been focused on Quality as a technical concept, assessable only by technicians and with no strong correlation with outcomes. The concept of Medicine as an Art is related to the values of vocation, dedication and good practice, recognizing that results can after all be negative In the XXI Century, we all now accept the scientific nature of Medicine and, therefore, its dependence on the objective assessment of outcomes. In contrast, the patient’s perception of Quality strongly depends on the culture and the environment. The current definition of disease given by the World Health Organization (WHO) focuses on self-perceived health and wellbeing. In this context, quality-based medicine should also be oriented towards the health and welfare as perceived by the patient. Quality is one of the strategic elements on which the transformation and improvement of modern health systems is based. The effort made in recent years towards quality assurance in this field –including in the particular case of nephrology-, entails recognition of the need for objective and standardized measurement tools for health activities: Quality is not just good intentions.