To make health care more responsive to patient needs, insight into patient priorities is needed. A systematic literature review, using electronic and manual searches, was made of studies on patient priorities with regard to primary health care. Data-extraction was performed by two researchers, followed by systematic analyses of study features. 57 studies were included. The aspects of care and methods used showed a wide variation. Aspects most often included were "informativeness", "humaneness" and "competence/accuracy". Based on an analysis of 19 studies, the following aspects were seen by patients as most important in more than 50% of the studies that included them: "humaneness", "competence/accuracy", "patients' involvement in decisions", "time for care", "other aspects of availability/accessibility", "informativeness", "exploring patients' needs", "other aspects of relation and communication" and "availability of special services".