Healthcare Areas

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.

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.