How the Vårdbetyg score is calculated

The Vårdbetyg score is a single combined rating between 0 and 100 for every health centre. It weighs patients’ own ratings from the National Patient Survey 2025 together with objective accessibility from the National Board of Health and Welfare’s waiting-time statistics. We always show the underlying data so you can judge for yourself how reliable the score is. The site also compares specialist outpatient clinics and emergency departments, and those have models of their own: see The score in the site’s other verticals.

1. An average of every dimension

The patient survey measures several dimensions of care – among them treatment, involvement, respect, continuity and accessibility. The Vårdbetyg score is built on an equally weighted average (every part counts the same) of the health centre’s results across these dimensions. Every dimension counts the same; we place no hidden weight on any single question.

2. Adjusting for how many responded

In short: when few patients responded we do not trust the figure blindly, but pull it closer to the national average. The more responses, the more the centre’s own result is allowed to count.

A health centre where only a handful of patients responded can end up with an extremely high or low average by pure chance. Letting such a unit top a list would be misleading – that is exactly the error that arises when rankings rest on a few ratings.

So we pull every health centre’s average part of the way towards the national average, and how far depends on how many responded. This is called Bayesian shrinkage. In practice:

Health centres with many responses keep almost all of their own result – we trust their data.
Health centres with few responses are pulled clearly towards the national average, until more patients have responded.
At 30 responses the centre’s own result and the national average carry exactly equal weight; above that the centre’s own result weighs more, below it less.

In short: the formula below blends the centre’s own score with the national average, and gives its own score more weight the more people responded.

Vårdbetyg = weight × own average + (1 − weight) × national average, where weight = responses / (responses + 30).

3. Accessibility is weighed in

Patient ratings capture the experienced quality of care. We complement them with objective accessibility from the National Board of Health and Welfare’s primary-care waiting-time statistics: the share of patients given a medical assessment within three days and the share of answered calls (phone/chat). The final Vårdbetyg score combines two parts:

Patient experience (National Patient Survey) – 70%.
Accessibility (waiting times) – 30%.

The accessibility part is also adjusted for the size of its basis, with the same shrinkage as the patient ratings: each health centre’s shares are pulled towards the national average based on the actual number of cases behind them (the National Board’s monthly “Total count” – often hundreds of assessments and calls per health centre and month). A share resting on many cases counts almost in full; a month with few cases is pulled clearly towards the national average. When both measures are present they are combined into one effective sample size where the smaller measure dominates – a handful of assessments cannot borrow certainty from thousands of calls. Where the count is missing entirely we use a cautious default basis of 70 cases.

For health centres that lack waiting-time data the weights are recomputed so the score rests entirely on the patient experience – a missing part never drags the score down. The waiting-time statistics are preliminary and may be revised by the National Board of Health and Welfare.

When we set no score at all

If fewer than 10 patients responded we set no Vårdbetyg score at all – the basis is too thin to say anything honest. The health centre is then shown as “Too few responses”, which says nothing about the quality of care, only that data is missing. On every health centre’s page we show the number of responses, the response rate and confidence intervals so you can see how reliable each figure is.

The score in the site’s other verticals

Everything above applies to health centres. The site also compares specialist outpatient clinics (specialistmottagningar) and emergency departments (akutmottagningar), and there the model differs for a concrete reason: the National Board of Health and Welfare’s waiting-time statistics cover primary care and cannot be applied to the other verticals. Those scores therefore rest on patient experience only. Both verticals are published in Swedish only.

Specialist outpatient clinics – the patient survey’s measurement of specialised outpatient hospital care, whose leading dimension is Helhetsintryck (overall impression) rather than Vård och behandling. The same Bayesian shrinkage as above, but towards that measurement’s own national average. It runs every second year; the latest survey year is 2025, and regions that sat out that round are shown with their own survey year. The waiting time to a first visit is shown as context beside the score, never inside it.
Emergency departments – the patient survey’s emergency measurement, run every second year on even years; the latest survey year is 2024, and a region that sat out that round is shown with its own survey year. The National Board’s emergency waiting times are measured per hospital, not per department, and the registers count different populations. They therefore appear as context on the hospital page and are never weighed into an individual department’s score.

In both verticals we compare only within a region. Regions report at different organisational levels, one per clinic and another per department group, so a national leaderboard would compare unlike things. For the same reason there are no awards and no seals there: the awards above apply to health centres only.

The honesty rules are identical everywhere: shrinkage towards the national average, a response floor, and a plain “too few responses” rather than an invented figure. In the specialist and emergency measurements the patient survey withholds units under 30 responses altogether, so there the floor is set by the survey itself.

How we highlight the best

Beyond the score itself we highlight the health centres that truly stand out. Two awards can be earned – both derived entirely from the Vårdbetyg score, stamped with the survey year and impossible to buy:

Top-rated in the municipality – the health centre has the highest Vårdbetyg score in its municipality. The award requires the municipality to have at least 3 rated health centres, so that first place actually means something. If two health centres have exactly the same score, the award goes to the one that comes first alphabetically.
Top 10% in Sweden – the health centre’s Vårdbetyg score is among the highest 10 percent in the country.

Setting an award requires a more solid basis than the score itself: at least 30 responses, against 10 to get a score at all. Highlighting a health centre as one of the best demands more certainty than simply showing a number. The Bayesian shrinkage above already pulls units with a thin basis towards the national average, so no one can top a list by chance – the response floor is an extra, clear guarantee.

The awards are verifiable. Every awarded health centre’s page shows the score and the number of responses behind it, and its place in the municipality when the municipality has enough rated health centres. No national placement is shown, because the top award rests on a threshold for the highest 10 percent rather than on a ranking. We never charge for placements, and no health centre can influence its award in any way other than through better results.

Named GP contact: context beside the score

On some health centres’ pages we show the share of listed patients who have a named regular doctor (fast läkarkontakt). It is one of the strongest quality signals in primary care, but it is not part of the Vårdbetyg score – it stands as descriptive context beside the score.

The measure comes from released public records (data requests) from three regions, and is site-exclusive: it never appears in our open data export. The three regions count in similar but not identical ways, so the denominator differs slightly:

Skåne – the region’s own quarterly share (patients listed on a named doctor divided by total listed), the unit’s most recent stable quarter through Q4 2025.
Stockholm – the GP listing, patients listed on a named doctor divided by the total. The basis is three extracts (October 2025, January 2026 and April 2026), and each unit is shown with its stable median extract.
Västra Götaland – monthly extracts January–July 2026: the sum of patients listed on the unit’s named doctors divided by total listed. VGR structurally lists nearly everyone on a named doctor, and the doctor register and the total list have different extract vintages, so the share is capped at 100% (a patient cannot have more than one regular doctor; the excess is register noise).

Compare confidently within a region, but carefully between regions – the definitions are not normalised into a single national measure, and coverage is three regions, not the whole country. An artefact guard picks the unit’s most recent stable period and excludes obvious register gaps (for example near-zero patients listed on a doctor); those units get no figure rather than a misleading one.

A low share can also reflect how the clinic registers listings, and a unit with many elderly or chronically ill patients can have a structurally higher share. Letting the measure affect the score itself would be a methodological and product decision that requires more even coverage; today it is pure context.

The 2015–2024 trend: history beside the score

On every health centre’s page we show how patients’ ratings have developed 2015–2024, per dimension, as small curves with the latest value written out. The series comes from the earlier NPE measurement (primary care 2015–2024), which uses different dimensions and a different design than the 2025 survey. That is why we never merge the history with today’s ratings: it stands beside the score as context, not inside it. Units are matched across years via their HSA id, the only key that is stable across the measurements.

The history follows the same honesty rules as the rest of the site:

Years without results are shown as breaks in the curve – we never interpolate values that do not exist.
Uncertainty is drawn: the band around the curve is the survey’s confidence interval. Where the interval is missing the band breaks, rather than pretending the uncertainty is zero.
A unit with only a single result gets a text note instead of a curve – one point is not a trend.

Why no up or down arrow? A direction label next to today’s score would read as “the trend right now”, but the comparable series ends in 2024. Only when the 2025 survey has a second comparable vintage can we set an uncertainty-tested direction. Until then we show the whole series with its first and latest value, and let you see the direction yourself.

Open and verifiable

All data comes from open sources. Patient experience is taken from the results portal for the National Patient Survey, and accessibility from the waiting-time statistics of the National Board of Health and Welfare. Every step above is public – anyone can recalculate it. We update the scores when a new survey is published. Read more about the data sources on About the data.

Want to see the difference in practice? On Raw mean vs shrunk Vårdbetyg we rank the same health centres both ways, side by side, and mark the ones that move the most.

Source: National Patient Survey 2025 (SKR). Open data at resultat.patientenkat.se.