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61% of patients said they had very good information and understanding when leaving the hospital. 

Province	Poor	Good	Very good	Number of respondents
Nova Scotia	7%	33%	60%	2,800
New Brunswick	7%	31%	62%	5,946
Ontario	6%	34%	60%	44,973
Manitoba	7%	35%	59%	10,933
Alberta	4%	33%	63%	21,870

Note
Data years vary: Ontario, Manitoba and Alberta, 2020–2021; New Brunswick, 2018–2019; and Nova Scotia, 2017–2018.

52% of patients said that they had a better understanding of their condition when they left the hospital than when they entered.

74% of patients reported that they had a clear understanding about all of their prescribed medications before they left the hospital.

The following 3 key drivers have been identified for the Information and Understanding When Leaving the Hospital measure. A key driver is a patient experience measure that is strongly associated with or that influences results for this measure. Key drivers can potentially be used as areas of focus when planning quality improvement initiatives. 

For more information on the methodology used in the key drivers analysis, please refer to Acute Care Patient-Reported Experience Measures — Methodology Notes (PDF). 

Key drivers: Information and Understand When Leaving the Hospital

Received Information About Condition and Treatment

Whether patients felt they received all of the information they needed about their condition and treatment.

Emotional Support

Whether patients felt they were supported and helped with any anxieties, fears or worries during their hospital stay.

Internal Coordination of Care

Whether patients felt there was good communication between doctors, nurses and other hospital staff. This measure also looks at whether patients felt that hospital staff seemed informed about and up to date on their hospital care.

PREMs improve our understanding of hospital visits and allow the patient voice to provide context on whether clinical aspects of care are meeting patients’ needs. When exploring health indicator results, it’s important to consider patient experience together with other results. Considering other health system performance indicators with PREMs can help identify targeted and patient-centred opportunities for improvement. 

For example, the Dryden Regional ������ϱ� Centre uses patient experience data and service-level indicators to determine where there are opportunities to improve care. 

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Departmental reports are used by service leaders to examine and address opportunities to improve patient care across the spectrum from admission to discharge. Our health care system cannot work in silo without connecting all the contributing factors. — Katherine Campbell, Director, Risk, Quality, Safety, Dryden Regional ������ϱ� Centre, Ontario

Other measures that could be considered alongside patient experience results include indicators focused on length of stay, wait times, hospital harms and readmissions.

What is the experience of patients readmitted to hospital? 

Looking at additional measures like readmission through the lens of patient experience is important, especially if your facility has high readmission rates. For instance, readmissions and repeat hospital visits can be influenced by discharge factors such as patients receiving enough information upon discharge. At a national level, 57% of those who were readmitted to hospital reported that they were adequately prepared when leaving the hospital, compared with 60% of non-readmitted patients (readmitted n = 3,369; non-readmitted n = 85,507), a statistically significant difference.

Understanding the experience of patients who were readmitted can highlight ways to improve future communication between patients and care providers. By linking patient experience results with clinical factors, patients with poorer experiences can be identified so that initiatives can be developed to improve health outcomes, reduce costs and improve patient-centred care.Reference2

• Methodology notes (PDF)