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To translate science into clinical practice we must first assess the quality of care that is being delivered. The resulting information about qualitative and quantitative parameters can then be assessed. Ultimately insights can be obtained into improving the quality of care in diabetes mellitus. The Diabetes Quality Improvement Programme in USA has shown such an exercise is feasible. A similar exercise in India is necessary to improve the quality of diabetes care. Background Complications in diabetes can be reduced by good glycemic control [1,2], and by correction of coexisting abnormalities such as dyslipidemia and hypertension [3]. In addition, lifestyle factors such as lack of physical exercise and smoking are potentially correctable. They are common in persons with diabetes who present for medical attention [4]. The bottleneck in diabetes care is not lack of evidence, but difficulty in implementing what is already known [5]. It is necessary to assess the quality of care that is being delivered so that it serves as a benchmark for further improvement. Domains of quality Quality can be assessed on the following areas (a) Well being, quality of life [6], (b) Clinical and biochemical parameters (c) Economic aspects [7]. All three components are important in chronic lifestyle diseases such as diabetes mellitus, where we aim at care rather than cure [6]. One must carefully consider a combination of all three aspects and must not aim for improvement in one area, to the exclusion of others. Assessment of quality Guidelines must be available to assess the quality of care in diabetes. The Diabetes Quality Improvement Programme (DQIP) [8] identified 'standardized' uniform performance measures for diabetes care, following a national consensus on care assessment. At the outset a distinction must be made between performance measures and care guidelines. Performance measures assess level of care delivered across an entire population, whereas care guidelines recommend desired level of care for a single patient. The aim and requirements of the DQIP were to develop a measurement set that is both accepted and implementable. Necessarily that required organizational, financial and logistical support. The operating group was broad based and included nearly all of the organizations concerned with delivery of diabetes care, including but not limited to American Diabetes Published: 19 April 2007 Lipids in Health and Disease 2007, 6:12 doi:10.1186/1476-511X-6-12 Received: 1 January 2007 Accepted: 19 April 2007 This article is available from: http://www.lipidworld.com/content/6/1/12 © 2007 Rao and Sridhar; licensee BioMed Central Ltd. This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.