Patient report seems to be a workable method for quality assurance. For the purpose of the development of such a method, a review was made of 40 studies into patient judgements on general practice care. Apparently, many aspects of care are only rarely included in patient report and the patients themselves are hardly ever involved in selecting these aspects. Furthermore, there appears to be a large variety in the methods that are used. The conclusion must be that in the field of general practice care only little progress has been made in the development of patient report as a method for quality assurance.