Emergency Departments
Welcome to Alberta’s go-to resource for reliable information about what patients experience in our province’s 16 busiest emergency departments. The Health Quality Council of Alberta (HQCA) believes that reporting about emergency departments, from things like patient wait times to hospital occupancy rates, are all important pieces of information that can lead to quality improvement and a better healthcare system in Alberta.
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Emergency Departments
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 for X-ray completion
- Time waiting for specialist/admitting doctor opinion
Delivery of care
- Hospital patients who require an alternate level of care
- Length of patient hospital stay compared to Canadian average
- Patients who left without being seen (LWBS) by an emergency department doctor
- Patients who returned to the emergency department within 72 hours
- Patients waiting in the emergency department for a hospital bed
- Hospital occupancy
Patient experience
Related FOCUS Departments
Starting a conversation
Why do we talk about things like hospital occupancy rates in relation to emergency departments? The healthcare system is complex and inter-related. What’s happening in the hospital, or even in continuing care, can impact patients’ experiences in the emergency department.
Our website features 18 interactive charts that are updated quarterly (every three months) and presents administrative data as well as patient experience survey data. You can compare emergency departments, such as those in medium urban centres like Red Deer and Medicine Hat, and look at data presented quarterly versus monthly.
- Why do some emergency departments have very different results compared to others?
- Why are there sometimes big changes from one year, quarter, or month to the next?
- Are there successes we can celebrate, or opportunities to improve?
This website is about starting conversations between healthcare providers, decision-makers, and the public they serve.