Patient Concerns & Feedback

patient concerns

Important:

Alberta Health Services values your input; we want to hear from you. Your feedback will help us further improve the quality of Alberta’s health care system.

If you have questions or concerns, or if you want to share a compliment about health care services or other support services you or a family member has received, there are options available for you to do so.

Do you have a concern?

Alberta Health Services is committed to quality improvement and takes patient concerns very seriously.

How do you voice a concern? If you have a concern about services received, there are a number of ways you can tell Alberta Health Services staff.

Alberta has legislation in place that upholds a patient’s right to express their concerns with health services. That legislation requires Alberta Health Services appoints a Patient Concerns Officer, who can be contacted at any time during a concern resolution, no matter which option you choose.

Your Options:

You can talk to your local health care provider directly about the concern, or you can involve the program manager or supervisor to help reach a resolution; or
You can contact the Patient Relations Department, by telephone: 1-877-753-2170 (Red Deer and North) or 1-877-957-9771 (south of Red Deer) and online; or
You can contact the Patient Concerns Officer, by telephone: 1-866-561-7578.

Staff are committed to working with you to resolve the concern as soon as possible.

Alberta Ombudsman

When a review of a concern by the PCO is completed, the PCO informs the complainant of the outcome and their right to contact the Alberta Ombudsman for an external review if they believe that the Patient Concerns Resolution Process used to address your concern was not fair.

If you have a question about the fairness of how your concern was handled by Alberta Health Services, you may contact the Alberta Ombudsman Office at Phone: 780-427-2756 or 403-297-6185 or visit www.ombudsman.ab.ca for more information.

Do you have a compliment?

Positive feedback helps us to know what we’re doing well, and we do appreciate hearing from our patients and their families. Tell us about your health care experience.

If you have compliments for staff, physicians or volunteers, or suggestions on how we can improve health services, you can contact the Patient Relations Department. Patient Relations helps support staff, patients and their families through the patient feedback process, assisting not only with concerns, but commendations and general feedback as well.

Privacy and Confidentiality

AHS protects the privacy of individuals receiving health services in accordance with the Health Information Act. To properly review and resolve concerns, we work with the patient, or an authorized representative (usually a close family member), to gather and share information about the services received.