A specter is haunting world; the phantom of the high cost of health services. The healthcare of patients with chronic non-transmissible diseases is becoming more costly following the introduction of biotech drugs and other causes. Thus, comprehensive health care strategies arise to mitigate these problems; one of them are Centers of Excellence (CoEs), which aim to obtain high quality results in health from adequate and minimum use of resources. We describe the history and current context of the CoEs in comprehensive care of patients with a chronic condition as a model for improving health care services, quality and costs. The CoEs are defined as a health program that fully complies with indicators of effectiveness and safety at competitive costs in the marketplace; this theory is based on the learning curve of healthcare, which leads to the three pillars of structuring a CoE. The volume of patients with a specific condition or entity" includes the first pillar which aims to ensure a considerable number of patients, allowing the CoE group to concentrate on a specific disease and feed the experience curve for professionals. The second pillar refers to the concept of "continuous improvement", which is based on all activities that organizations constantly perform to improve quality processes. The third pillar is the quality of healthcare, where efforts are focused on academic and human quality of the members of the interdisciplinary team to provide comprehensive management. International standards focus the CoEs starting from comprehensive management of patients with specific condition, patient volume, continuous improvement, and quality of healthcare, constituting an interdisciplinary team. The creation of comprehensive care centers of the CoE type is an initiative that improves the prognosis, quality and cost-efficiency of these conditions. This document aims to encourage specialists and scientific societies to structure CoEs in an interdisciplinary endeavor.