Background The Swedish Association of local authorities and regions in collaboration with the national board of health and welfare produces the yearly “Swedish Health Care Report” in order to provide evaluations of the hospitals and counties in Sweden for both the politicians and the general public. Method We describe several standard methods which have been used to present the performance of each hospital or county: Forest plot (FL), League Table (LT), League Plot (LP) and Funnel Plot (FP). Using simulation technique to produce the League Plot of rank is also presented in order to illustrate the unreliable of the ranking principle. Results The league plot with confidence interval is easily understood by people, but it should provide the total number of operations (sample size) as well. The resulting multiple-indicators system gives a clear overview of the whole system, but the cut-off points used in the traffic light method is not the best choice. Several possible improved methodologies are: A league plot traffic light method and a standard funnel plot traffic light method is recommended when aiming at finding the outliers; A p=0.67 funnel plot traffic light method is suggested when wishing to divide the units into approximately equally large groups; A one-side traffic light method seems to be a wonderful choice when focusing on the bad performance units.