The quality of care, its security, improvement and incentives are the declared aim of the health care legislation in recent years. The current issue of the quality monitor is dedicated to emergency care, to which transparency deficits and control deficits are attested. The Quality Monitor 2020 provides further impulses for the discussion about the quality and the further development of pre-inpatient and inpatient emergency care. The work published by Health City Berlin, the Quality Medicine Initiative (IQM) and the Scientific Institute of the AOK (WIdO) repeatedly takes up relevant quality issues from inpatient and cross-sector care. The specialist articles on the focus on emergency care represent the status of the political reform discussion and consider inpatient emergency care for life-threatening indications, also taking into account the previous findings from the COVID-19 pandemic. Structures and processes in rescue services, regional model projects and the status of digitization are discussed and suggestions for improvement are made. Another section shows key data on the supply structure and quality data of German hospitals for selected emergency indications in inpatient care. With its specialist articles and nationwide quality data, the Quality Monitor 2020 provides well-founded support for the quality assurance debate in Germany. The health policy actors and providers who are involved in the creation and implementation of statutory quality specifications or who want to help shape them are shown relevant approaches and suggestions for the further development and improvement of the quality of care are given.