On behalf of the Swedish government, the National Board of Health and Welfare recently issued a recommended set of 60 quality indicators for broad monitoring of the quality of national health care. This initiative is in concordance with similar international initiatives. The Swedish process, however, is unique in the sense that the professions have developed the indicator and more than 40 national quality registers already monitor most of them. Health care professionals in Sweden have a long-standing tradition of measuring and monitoring results including comparing the quality of different health providers by means of the quality registers. However, the transparency by which these measures are presented, the general understanding of how such data should be interpreted and used in practice is as yet not sufficiently developed. Transparency of data combined with knowledgeable interpretation by health professionals will provide patients with sound information about health care quality and the necessary prerequisites for making comparisons between providers. It will also help guiding managers and politicians making decisions. In order to reach this objective, close co-operation between patient organisations, health care managers and the professionals is needed including a common understanding of the needs and perspectives of all parties.