Patient experience with talking with staff about help needed at home | HQCA Focus

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Patient experience with talking with staff about help needed at home

Percentage of patients who reported they talked with hospital staff about whether they would have the help they needed at home. (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?
  • Are there differences in patient experiences between hospitals of the same type (e.g., Large Urban)?
  • 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 “talked about help needed at home”

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 how often patients have discussions with care staff about their needs once returning home.

Alberta Health Services (AHS) asked patients the following question:

During this hospital stay, did doctors, nurses, or other hospital staff talk with you about whether you would have the help you needed when you left the hospital?

For this question, the patient could choose “no”, or “yes”. In the chart above, the percentage of patients who responded “yes” is displayed.

Considerations when viewing the results

Patients needs once returning home may vary according to:

  • “Newness” of a condition (those newly diagnosed may require more help that those who have lived with condition for years)
  • Living situation (e.g. living alone, vs. with a spouse, loved one, or roommate)
  • Level of mobility
  • Cognitive ability

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.

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