Quality assessment and evaluation becomes an issue of raising concern as the re-organization of health services in Brazil has been discussed. In this review, we search for the historical background of health services evaluation and present the contemporary proposals for a systematic quality evaluation. The analyses of the studies reviewed show two major methodological trends in this area: the Rationalizing-Corporative and the Antropological-Social Studies. Most of both types of studies derive from the work on health services evaluation developed during the last twenty years by Avedis Donabedian.