Why should your clinic conduct a patient experience survey?

We asked this question to Dr. Maria J. Santana, a health services researcher, Associate Professor in the departments of Pediatrics and Community Health Sciences at the Cumming School of Medicine, University of Calgary. She is the provincial director, Patient Engagement for the Alberta Strategy for Patient-oriented Research.

Here’s what she had to say:

“To provide personalized care, patients should receive care that is important to them – that addresses their values, needs and preferences. This patient-centred care model needs to be measured; as what we don’t measure, we can’t change. To do so, healthcare systems need valid and reliable measures to understand what matters to patients, this includes patient experience measures.”

“The HQCA’s Primary Care Patient Experience Survey is a valid, evidence-based, and patient-informed measurement tool. The implementation of HQCA’s survey in primary care will benefit not only quality improvement activities but will also allow care providers to be able to respond to what matters most to patients.”

“It’s important to highlight the support that the HQCA provides in administering this survey in primary care across Alberta, minimizing the time and resources primary care clinics needs to do this critical work.”

For more information about the Primary Care Patient Experience Survey and details on how to get started at your clinic…
Visit Surveying Patients About Primary Care Experience or email surveys@hqca.ca.

2023 Primary Healthcare Panel Reports Now Available

The 2023 reports are available today for primary care providers across Alberta. This free report provides measures on continuity of care, screening of chronic conditions, mental health conditions, virtual care appointments, and more – so physicians can reflect on their practice and compare with colleagues.

Primary Healthcare Panel Reports have been offered for more than a decade now. The HQCA develops them in partnership with Alberta Health, Alberta Health Services, the College of Physicians and Surgeons of Alberta, the Alberta Medical Association, the University of Alberta, the University of Calgary, the Physician Learning Program, Primary Care Networks, and the HQCA Patient and Family Advisory Committee.

To access your report…
If you have already requested your report, you can access it via an email from the HQCA; or if you know the type of report you have – please visit this page and click on the corresponding link.

To request a report…
If you are a primary care provider and would like to learn more about requesting a Primary Healthcare Panel Report from the HQCA, please download this guide for more information. And remember, developing an action plan and implementing change based on the data in your panel report counts as a practice-driven quality improvement activity with the College of Physicians and Surgeons of Alberta’s (CPSA) Physician Practice Improvement Program (PPIP). Visit the CPSA website to find out more.

2022 Primary Healthcare Panel Reports Available

The 2022 reports are available today. This free report provides measures on continuity of care, screening of chronic conditions, COVID-19 vaccination data, virtual care appointments, and more – so physicians can reflect on their practice and compare with colleagues.

Dr. Ojedokun

Primary Healthcare Panel Reports have been offered for more than a decade now. The HQCA develops them in partnership with the College of Physicians and Surgeons of Alberta, Alberta Health, Alberta Health Services, the Alberta Medical Association, the University of Alberta, the University of Calgary, the Physician Learning Program, Primary Care Networks, and the HQCA Patient and Family Advisory Committee.

For family physicians such as Dr. Joseph Ojedokun of Whitecourt, Alberta, the reports are an important component of quality improvement.

“You can’t improve without measurement,” says Dr. Ojedokun. “My Primary Healthcare Panel Report allows me to see how many patients are actually in my panel, how many patients I can serve effectively, along with many key measurements including breast cancer screening and colorectal cancer screening. Without knowing this data, it’s impossible to improve patient care. That’s why I use my report.”

Family physicians and/or their quality improvement representatives can request a report here. If you’ve already requested your report, you can access it here.

New family physician data now available

Every year, more than 1,500 family physicians receive a Primary Healthcare Panel Report from the Health Quality Council of Alberta (HQCA) to help improve their practice.

The 2021 reports are available today. This free report provides measures on continuity of care, screening of chronic conditions, and more – so physicians can reflect on their practice and compare with colleagues.

Primary Healthcare Panel Reports have been offered for about a decade now. The HQCA develops them in partnership with the College of Physicians and Surgeons of Alberta, Alberta Health, Alberta Health Services, the AMA, the University of Alberta, the University of Calgary, the Physician Learning Program, Primary Care Networks, and the HQCA Patient and Family Advisory Committee.

For family physicians such as Dr. Darryl Labuick of St. Alberta, the reports are an important component of quality improvement.

“The data provided in the HQCA Primary Healthcare Panel Reports are the alpha piece of information,” says Dr. Labuick. “We can trust it.”

Family physicians and/or their quality improvement representatives can request a report here. If you’ve already requested your report, you can access it here.

Let’s get digital – Primary Healthcare Panel Reports

In March, the Health Quality Council of Alberta (HQCA) released its annual update to its Primary Healthcare Panel Report. This year, family physicians received a pdf copy of the report, and access to the report in a digital format.

With a unique combination of measures not found elsewhere, the Primary Healthcare Panel report covers information for family physicians inside and outside clinic walls. The measures in the report – 24 measures from 12 different administrative data sources, separate from the EMR – are a reminder of clinical guidelines and best practices. The report helps doctors ask the all-important question, what should I focus on?

In 2019, the HQCA with the help and support of our many partners, is moving the Primary Healthcare Panel Reports to a digital format. Going digital offers:

  • Customizable reports
  • Identification and focus on specific clinical and demographic populations
  • Ability to extract data
  • Interactive charts and graphs
  • New ways to evaluate continuity and access

“We are always looking to innovate the report,” says Andrew Neuner, HQCA Chief Executive Officer. “The digital experience allows people to go straight to the measures that matter to their practice. Going to digital reporting gives users interactive tools to dive deeper into their patient data. Users will be able to assess their continuity for populations of interest and view how their panel continuity differs from a comparator, such as another Primary Care Network (PCN).”

Offering feedback to family physicians about their practice, the report shares how the physician’s patient population compares to their peers, their PCN, AHS Zone and the provincial stats. They assist family physicians to understand:

  • when and why patients are going to the Emergency Department
  • whether patients are going to other family physicians – how often and for what services
  • how their patient population compares to their peers:
    • Are their patients older or younger?
    • Are their patients sicker or healthier?
    • How does the social and material deprivation indices compare for their patients to other patients in their PCN and the AHS Zone?
  • how the screening and continuity rates of their panel compare to their peers’ panels

Since 2011, the HQCA has been providing Primary Healthcare Panel Reports upon request to family physicians across the province. This free resource is an invaluable tool to support and inform program planning, panel management, quality improvement, and policy development at the various levels of the primary healthcare system. Physicians can request their panel report here

New and improved Primary Healthcare Panel Reports

We invite family physicians to request their 2016-17 Primary Healthcare Panel Report. These individualized reports provide information about patient demographic characteristics, health status, and aspects of patient management and utilization patterns across the healthcare system. They can help physicians and their teams strengthen the patient’s medical home and can be used to:

  • Inform panel management activities
  • Identify and focus on specific areas for improvement
  • Identify gaps in screening and key preventive interventions
  • Help physicians understand the burden of illness of their panel
  • Assist with program planning and evaluation
  • Make comparisons to PCN and zone aggregate panels

To ensure the reports are of most value for quality improvement in primary healthcare, they have been significantly revised through a collaborative effort with patients; family physicians; PCN executive and medical directors; Alberta Health; Alberta Health Services; Alberta Medical Association; the College of Physicians & Surgeons of Alberta; the Universities of Alberta and Calgary medical schools.

Visit www.hqca.ca/panelreports/ to request a report. You can also check out this informational video to learn more.