Our two co-Issue Editors, Boel Andersson-Gare, MD, PhD, of the County Council of Jonkoping, Sweden, and Duncan Neuhauser, PhD, of Case Western Reserve University, have built this issue of Quality Management in Health Care around contemporary developments in quality management in the health care systems of Sweden, focusing on the health care delivery system of the county of Jonkoping. Jonkoping's system is widely viewed as a model of study and progressive implementation of methods for improving the quality of health care outcomes. All but one of the articles in this issue stem from the Jonkoping system. Quality Management in Health Care is very grateful to Dr Andersson-Gare and Dr Neuhauser for their successful collaboration in bringing these authors together to give us the benefits of their research and insights.

In the remaining article, Elg, Kollberg, Lindmark, and Olsson analyze the development of a flow model that emphasizes the sequence of activities included in a patient's progress through a health care system. Their exploration is part of a larger research project addressing the development of process-oriented innovation in health care delivery.

Jean Gayton Carroll, PhD, Editor