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- Primary Healthcare
- Clinical care
- Delivery of care
- Consistent use of the same primary care provider (provider continuity)
- Consistent use of the same primary care clinic (clinic continuity)
- Primary care provider use of various visit types
- Emergency department visits for minor conditions
- Primary care provider visit after a hospital stay for selected chronic conditions
- Patient experience
- Patients’ experience with primary care providers’ listening
- Patients’ rating of primary care provider’s explanations
- Patients’ experience with appointment length
- Patients’ experience with primary care provider’s respect
- Patients’ experiences with their primary care provider involving them in care decisions
- Patient experience with care coordination
- Patient experience with primary care provider availability
- Patients’ overall experience with their primary care provider
- Emergency Department
- Wait times
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- 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
- Number of different professional care staff
- Professional care staff gave choice in how care is provided
- Professional care staff explanation easy to understand
- Professional care staff listened carefully
- Professional care concerns handled satisfactorily
- Number of different personal care staff
- Personal care staff informed of arrival time
- Personal care staff listened carefully
- Personal care staff explanation easy to understand
- Personal care concerns handled satisfactorily
- Personal care staff were supportive
- Personal care staff had a warm presence
- Overall rating of professional care
- Overall rating of personal care
- Client overall care experience
- Home care helps clients stay at home
- 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
- Resident experience
- Resident overall experience
- Resident experiences with sharing concerns
- Resident experiences with rules
- Resident experiences with independence
- Resident experiences with feeling safe
- Resident experiences with activities
- Resident experience with getting their healthcare needs met
- Resident experience with food
- Resident experience with decision-making
- 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
Primary Healthcare
Patient experience with primary care provider availability
How patients rated the availability of their primary care provider over the past 12 months. (See data definition).
*Data courtesy of Health Quality Alberta’s Primary Care Patient Experience Survey.
What do you think?
- How would you rate your primary care provider’s availability compared to what was reported by other Albertans?
- What might your care provider, or their clinic, do to ensure they are available when it’s convenient to you?
Understanding “primary care provider availability”
In surveys conducted between April 2021 and March 2024, Health Quality Alberta asked patients who recently visited their primary care provider:
- In the last 12 months, how would you rate the availability of your primary care provider?
Patients could choose “excellent / very good / good / fair / poor”.
Patient experience is likely better if patients are able to book an appointment with their primary care provider when they need to.
Considerations when viewing the results
As primary care providers work to develop a better understanding of how they could improve this rating, other questions can be asked, such as:
- Can patients get an appointment when they need to? This refers not only to urgent requests, but also requests based on what works best for the patient. To learn more about how consistently a patient visits the same family primary care provider, view primary care provider continuity results.
- What is the process for handling urgent requests? Are same-day appointments available?
- If the patient’s family doctor is not unavailable, can the patient get an appointment with another primary care provider at the same clinic to help maintain the patient’s relationship with their primary care provider? To learn more about how consistently a patient visits the same clinic, view clinic continuity results.
- What is the provider’s third next available appointment? The “third next available” appointment is a more useful indicator rather than “next available” as it is a more sensitive reflection of appointment availability. The “next available” might be capturing an unexpected cancellation in the schedule.
- Does the number of patients the primary care provider has (demand) match the available time needed to see those patients (supply)? To learn more about supply and demand visit Accelerating Change Transformation Team site. To learn more about access to primary care services and the choices that patients make about where to seek medical care on short notice, view emergency department visits for minor conditions results.
- Are alternative hours and alternate visit types available, such as telephone or email, if provider office hours do not align with patient availability? To learn more, view percentage of family doctor visits that were done using another visit type, such as telephone or email.
For information about Health Quality Alberta’s patient experience surveys offered to individual clinics in Alberta, please visit Health Quality Alberta’s website.