Decreased health-related quality of life (HRQoL) is well known for the previous ICU population after critical care, and many factors are of importance for this outcome. We have in a recent study shown that pre-existing disease is most important. This finding was made when comparing a control population adjusting for co-morbidities and approximately 50% of the decrease in HRQoL was attributed to co-morbidities. Therefore, there must be other factors that contribute to the HRQoL decrease. In HRQoL research it has been shown that social support also is important for the HRQoL experience. In the southeast of Sweden, two neighbouring large cities are known to have different social support patterns depending on their differences in social structure. We hypothesized that the social support is different between the patients coming from city A's ICU compared with city B. The aim of this study was to examine to what extent social support affected HRQoL outcome in the follow-up of these patients in general and to what extent it differed between the patients of ICUs of the different cities.