About the Ratings

Let the colours guide you

There are significant differences among hospitals on every measure. When reading the ratings, focus your research on the specific service or level of care you might need.

Ratings on myhospitalcare.ca are expressed with numeric values and colour-coded to indicate better than average (dark green), average (green) and lower than average (light green), performance.  As illustrated below, the colour coding is simply used to demonstrate a hospital's relative performance as either above average, average, or below average. 

The colours will help guide your interpretation of the numbers since, depending on the indicator, a higher or lower number may be desirable. For example, a lower number may be better when describing the rate of adverse events in labour and delivery and therefore will be expressed in dark green. For patient satisfaction, however, a lower number will appear in light green because it represents a lower than average performance.

More information available from other sources

Hospital performance information is also available from other sources, including the Hospital Report Research Collaborative’s Hospital Report as well as the Canadian Institute for Health Information and the Ministry of Health and Long-Term Care’s Wait Times strategy.

With the exception of this last one, these initiatives are tools for health care management and not designed for the general public’s use. Myhospitalcare.ca was designed for patients and their families to do their own research and become an active partner in their health care.

Don’t judge a hospital by a single measure

It is important to understand that hospitals are complex organizations whose weaknesses in one area are often balanced by strengths in another. To judge performance by using only one measurement, or ‘indicator’, would be misleading. Discuss your findings with your health care team.