The Swedish Perioperative Register (SPOR) - a national quality register - supports automatic data transfer from local medical records to its central database, without the need for further manual input. Covering 100 percent of surgical operations across all publicly run hospitals in Sweden, SPOR data show regional inequality regarding patients' waiting time from the decision to operate until the start of surgery. SPOR data can inform several areas of improvement for perioperative care, such as management of postoperative pain and nausea, increased use of the Checklist for Safe Surgery, and improved logistics. The growing number of online reports downloaded locally suggests increasing use of SPOR data for follow-up and care improvement efforts. Data from many privately run surgical units do not appear in the SPOR due to technical difficulties in reporting.