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OBJECTIVES Quality assessment is an important element in providing surgical cancer care. The main objective of this study was to develop a new composite measure ‘textbook outcome’, to evaluate and improve quality of surgical care for patients undergoing a resection for non-small-cell lung cancer (NSCLC). METHODS All patients undergoing an anatomical resection for NSCLC from 2012 to 2016 registered in the nationwide Dutch Lung Cancer Audit were included in an analysis to assess usefulness of a composite measure as a quality indicator. Based on expert opinion, textbook outcome was defined as having a complete resection (negative resection margins and sufficient lymph node dissection), plus no 30-day or in-hospital mortality, no reintervention in 30 days, no readmission to the intensive care unit, no prolonged hospital stay ( RESULTS In total, 5513 patients were included in this study. Textbook outcome was achieved in 26.4% of patients. Insufficient lymph node dissection had the most substantial effect on not realizing textbook outcome. If ‘sufficient lymph node dissection’ was not included as a criterion, textbook outcome would be 60.7%. Case-mix adjusted textbook outcome proportions per hospitals varied between 13.2% and 37.7%. CONCLUSIONS In contrast to focusing on a single aspect, the composite measure textbook outcome provides insight into comprehensive performance in NSCLC surgery. It can be used to evaluate both individual hospitals and national performance and provides the opportunity to give benchmarked feedback to thoracic surgeons.