2024 Patient Experience Award winners support patients through different life and health challenges

Four teams are being recognized today by the Health Quality Council of Alberta for improving the patient and family experience across a range of services – including kidney disease, recovery from addiction, and women’s reproductive health.

“This year’s recipients are an exceptional group of providers who have shown a commitment to continually improving patient and family experiences,” notes Medgine Mathurin, Chair of the HQCA’s Patient and Family Advisory Committee and a judge of the awards. “We believe they can inspire others in the healthcare system.”

The Patient Experience Awards program was established by the HQCA and its Patient and Family Advisory Committee in 2015 to recognize and spread knowledge about initiatives that improve the patient’s overall experience in accessing or receiving healthcare services. Aspects of patient experience include relationships, and how patients and families are treated; delivery of services to be person-centred, safe, timely, and effective; planning of services, such that patients and families are treated as partners; and a clean, safe, and inviting physical environment that supports healing and the efficient delivery of services.

Submissions are evaluated in a rigorous two-part process in which applicants describe the challenge they were trying to solve, their solution and how they identified it, the impact it has had, and the degree to which their solution can be scaled up and spread to others.

“We’re not looking at what kind of service they provide per se, or to whom, but rather how and where they provide it such that it demonstrates a measurably better experience for patients,” explains Charlene McBrien-Morrison, Chief Executive Officer of the HQCA. “In that sense, these teams can provide a model for others that may be serving an entirely different patient population.”

Read about the 2024 recipients here.