About FOCUS
Developed by the Health Quality Council of Alberta (HQCA), FOCUS provides data about what patients experience in Alberta’s healthcare system. We believe that transparent reporting about what’s happening across our healthcare system with patients, families, and our partners from healthcare and academia, can lead to quality improvement and a better understanding of Alberta’s healthcare system.
FOCUS is a unique way for the HQCA to deliver on its mandate to monitor and report on health service quality and patient safety for Albertans.
Who can benefit from the information on FOCUS?
- Decision-makers and leaders in our healthcare system
- Healthcare providers
- Albertans with an interest in the healthcare system and/or improvement activities
FOCUS provides:
- Transparency – FOCUS is a public website that provides everyone in the healthcare system access to the same healthcare data and information. Patients and families have the same access as our partners in healthcare.
- A greater understanding of Alberta’s healthcare system – FOCUS brings together information from multiple healthcare areas to create a greater understanding of the whole system. A system view helps users to better understand the relationship between healthcare areas, how patients journey through the system, and provides a clearer picture of how the system is working overall.
- Information to support quality improvement – The data on FOCUS is presented in user-friendly, interactive charts that allow you to compare appropriate groupings of data (e.g., across EDs, across PCNs, across zones or other geographic areas, and provincially). Below each chart there are prompting questions and more detailed information to encourage you to reflect on the data and:
- consider the quality of the healthcare system within one area, and across or in relation to other areas
- ask questions about what you see, and seek out answers to identify if improvement work is needed
- engage in conversations about areas of success and opportunities for improvement