New website ranks patient experiences in Alberta emergency rooms

Wondering how long you'll have to wait in an Alberta emergency room? A new website will give you a hint.

FOCUS on Emergency Departments compilesdata on emergency room wait times for 16 of the busiest hospitals in Alberta, patient experiences, and wait times to see specialists.

The website was launched by the Health Quality Council of Alberta (HQCA), which polls thousands of Albertans each year on their experiences in hospitals.

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"It starts with a focus on emergency department care. People can go on the website and view a lot of different things," said Andrew Neuner, a chief executive at HQCA.

Neuner said the website offers information on almost 20 common questions or concerns patients may have such as how long wait times have been at a certain hospital for the past five years, how many patients left an emergency department without seeing a doctor, and overall rating of care.

People canleave their own feedback based on their hospital experiences, or simply read the data compiled by HQCA.

'Single source' of information for patients

Neunersaid the website acts as a "single source" for this kind of information and will expand in the future to include information about other sectors of the healthcare system.

"Primary care, long term care, residential care, home care," Neuner said.

"I think there is a real need and an interest to do it for mental health. For cancer, for public health, there's a lot of different sectors that we need to look at."

I think it will be a useful tool for providers to understand how they are doing.- AndrewNeuner,chief executive atHQCA

Neuner said he hopes to get to the point where the website shows the full picture of the healthcare system in Alberta.

He hopes that not only potential patients are able to get valuable information from the website's data, but health care providers as well.

"I think it will be a useful tool for providers to understand how they are doing," Neuner said.

"They can see what others are doingand where others are doing things well. We hope that will start different kinds of conversations so we can improve the system."