Healthcare Areas
Also in this section
- Primary Healthcare
- Clinical care
- Delivery of care
- Patient experience
- Patients’ experience with family doctors’ listening
- Patients’ rating of family doctor’s explanations
- Patients’ experience with appointment length
- Patients’ experience with family doctor’s respect
- Patients’ experiences with their doctor involving them in care decisions
- Patient experience with care coordination
- Patient experience with family doctor availability
- Patients’ overall experience with their family doctor
- Emergency Department
- Wait times
- EMS response time for life-threatening events
- Time spent by EMS at hospital
- Patient time to see an emergency doctor
- Patient emergency department total length of stay (LOS)
- Length of time emergency department patients wait for a hospital bed after a decision to admit
- Time to get X-ray completed
- Emergency department volumes
- Delivery of care
- Hospital patients who require an alternate level of care
- Length of patient hospital stay compared to Canadian average length of hospital stay
- Patients who left without being seen (LWBS) by an emergency department doctor
- Patients waiting in the emergency department for a hospital bed
- Hospital occupancy
- Patient experience
- Patient experience with staff introductions
- Patient experience with communication about follow-up care
- Patient experience with help for pain
- Communication with patients about possible side effects of medicines
- Patient reason for emergency department visit
- Overall patient experience with emergency department communication
- Overall rating of care
- Highlight Meaningful Changes
- Wait times
- Hospital Care
- Delivery of care
- Patient experience
- Overall rating of care
- Patient experience with talking with staff about help needed at home
- Patient experience with staff helping with pain
- Patient experience with information about their condition and treatment
- Patient experience with involvement in care decisions
- Patient experience with communication with nurses and doctors
- Client experience
- Client experience with courtesy and respect
- Client experience with listening
- Client experience with reaching their case manager
- Client experience with case manager (help with community services)
- Client experience with care plan involvement
- Client experience with care plan meeting needs
- Client experience with independence (home set-up)
- Client experience with independence (staff encouragement)
- Client experience with personal care staff capability
- Client experience with communication about a visit cancellation
- Client experience with pain management
- Client experience with reviewing medications
- Client experience with help to stay at home
- Client experience with family doctor being informed
- Client overall care experience
- Delivery of care
- Resident experience
- Resident experience with decision-making
- Resident experience with food
- Resident experience with getting their healthcare needs met
- Resident experiences with sharing concerns
- Resident experiences with feeling safe
- Resident experiences with independence
- Resident experiences with rules
- Resident experiences with activities
- Resident overall experience
- Family experience
- Family experience with courtesy and respect
- Family experience with decision-making
- Family experience with food
- Family experience with healthcare services and treatments
- Family experience with resident cared for by the same staff
- Presence of a resident and family council
- Family experience with sharing concerns
- Family experience with staffing
- Family overall rating of care
- Clinical care
- Symptoms of delirium
- Mood worsened from symptoms of depression
- Behavioural symptoms improved
- Inappropriate use of antipsychotics
- Worsening pain
- New pressure ulcers
- Physical restraint use
- Unexplained weight loss
- Cognitive performance
- Frailty and risk of health decline
- Potential depression
- Activities of daily living
- Delivery of care
- Family experience
- Family experience with courtesy and respect
- Family experience with decision-making
- Family experience with food
- Family experience with healthcare services and treatments
- Family experience with resident cared for by the same staff
- Family experience of resident and family council
- Family experience with sharing concerns
- Family experience with staffing
- Family experience with staff responsiveness
- Family overall rating of care
Hospital Care
Patient experience with communication with nurses and doctors
Percentage of patients who reported “always” on aspects of communication with nurses and doctors. There are three distinct questions on communication: courtesy and respect, listening, and providing clear explanations. Please refer to the shaded column below to choose a question, choice of nurses or doctors, as well as other comparative options. (see data definition)
- *Data courtesy of Alberta Health Services
What do you see?
- What opportunities do these results highlight for care providers and decision makers to develop improvement initiatives?
- Smaller hospitals (e.g., those listed as Remaining Hospitals under the ‘Choose Hospital Type’ filter in the shaded column) have fewer experience survey responses compared to larger hospitals. As a result, graphs for these hospitals may show big differences between data points (e.g., 100 per cent to a much lower percentage). Please interpret these results cautiously.
Why is it meaningful?
- Whether you’re a patient, provider, or health system administrator, thinking about this measure can start conversations and lead to solutions for improved quality of healthcare.
- Do you see successes worth highlighting or opportunities for improvement?
Understanding “communication with nurses and doctors”
Surveying patients about their hospital experiences provides a voice for patients about the quality of their care. A key part of their experience can be determined by communication with healthcare providers.
Alberta Health Services (AHS) asked patients a series of questions about different aspects of communication they experienced during their visit. These questions were asked separately about nurses and doctors.
The questions were:
- During this hospital stay, how often did nurses/doctors treat you with courtesy and respect?
- During this hospital stay, how often did nurses/doctors listen carefully to you?
- During this hospital stay, how often did nurses/doctors explain things a way that you could understand?
For each question, the patient could choose “never”, “sometimes”, “usually”, or “always”. In the chart above, the percentage of patients who responded “always” to each question is displayed.
This chart reports on communication from nurses and doctors because they are the most common healthcare providers in the hospital. However, patients’ experiences can benefit when all types of hospital staff communicate with respect, listen, and explain things clearly.
Considerations when viewing the results
Previous research has shown that communication with nurses and doctors are the most important aspects of determining patients’ overall ratings of care.
About the survey
AHS conducts a telephone survey with a random sample of patients from 93 hospitals across Alberta. The responses collected in the survey are analyzed by AHS, and the results to this question, and several others, are shared with the HQCA. The HQCA then posts updated results on this website every quarter (three months). See our methodology page to learn more about the survey methodology.
Alberta Quality Matrix for Health
The Health Quality Council of Alberta uses the Alberta Quality Matrix for Health as a way of organizing information and thinking around the complexity of the healthcare system. This measure can be used as input to assess hospital performance in these dimensions of quality: Acceptability and Appropriateness.