FAQs

myhospitalcare.ca is a website that allows you to look up performance measurements, or ‘indicators’, that health care industry experts use to measure and improve the performance of Ontario hospitals.

While hospitals are required to make public a great number of performance indicators, myhospitalcare.ca uses only the measurements that the Ontario Hospital Association (OHA) believes are of the greatest interest to members of the general public.

Currently, the site includes measurements on acute care paediatrics, emergency, rehabilitation, mental health, chronic and complex care, as well as general satisfaction indicators such as the patients’ overall impression of their hospital experiences. Also included are indicators for hospital deaths and infection rates.

Who developed myhospitalcare.ca?

The website was developed by the Ontario Hospital Association (OHA), a voluntary organization representing approximately 155 public hospital corporations across 225 locations in Ontario. Founded in 1924 as an independent, non-profit organization, its members include all the public hospitals in Ontario as well as the province’s psychiatric hospitals. As the voice of Ontario’s hospitals, the OHA is shaping the health care system by fostering leadership, supporting innovation and building linkages between hospitals and their communities.

Why was myhospitalcare.ca developed?

Ontario hospitals operate in one of the most demanding health care accountability systems in Canada. They are required to report publicly on a number of performance measures and are accountable for meeting a level of care in return for the tax dollars provided to operate them. Myhospitalcare.ca takes from this mass of information the data that is most important to patients and their families and puts it into an easy-to-understand format.

This website reflects the Ontario Hospital Association’s (OHA) commitment to transparency and openness concerning the performance of hospitals and the health care system. By making this performance data more easily accessible to the public, the OHA is also helping hospitals become more accountable.

Why should I use myhospitalcare.ca?

Some hospitals have more experience or better results than others in treating certain conditions or performing certain procedures. The information on this website can help guide a discussion with your health care team about an upcoming procedure or hospital stay. You have a say in your own health care but most people don’t know where to begin learning more about who will care for them. Myhospitalcare.ca is designed to help you make an informed decision about your care. Its search tools give you easy access, in an understandable way, to publicly available information on health care that industry experts use to measure and improve the performance of Ontario hospitals.

How does the site work?

You can search and view information on myhospitalcare.ca by hospital, by location, by type of care and/or by indicator – any aspect of care that you may be intereste

You can search and view information on myhospitalcare.ca by hospital, by location, by type of care and/or by indicator.
Although hospitals collect data on many different aspects of their operations, myhospitalcare.ca features only the information that is most likely to be of interest to patients. Currently, there are 47 different indicators, each rating an aspect of patient care.

Where does myhospitalcare.ca’s data come from?

The site uses data selected from the Hospital Report Research Collaborative (HRRC), the Canadian Institute for Health Information (CIHI), and the Ontario Ministry of Health and Long-Term Care (MOHLTC). It is data that concerns Ontario hospitals only. Along with the MOHLTC, the OHA is a co-funder and founder of the HRRC's Hospital Report and facilitates the researchers’ extensive access to its member hospitals. Hospital Report provides a lot of the data that powers myhospitalcare.ca. CIHI also plays a key role in the development of the Hospital Report and many of CIHI’s methodologies are used worldwide.

What can I do with the information I find here?

Talk to your health care team about it. Remember that hospitals are complex organizations and judging overall performance on the basis of only one measurement, or ‘indicator’, could be misleading. You should discuss your findings further with a member of your health care team.

Patients should not use the site as a guide to choosing a hospital.

Why are some of the old indicators no longer on the website?

The original patient experience indicators came from Hospital Report and are no longer published on this website because Hospital Report no longer exists. These indicators have been replaced with the patient experience indicators from NRCC.

What is an indicator?

An indicator is a standardized measure that allows for the evaluation of relative hospital performance against past performance or against the performance of other hospitals.

How is patient experience data collected?

Patients voluntarily and confidentially, in accordance with privacy legislation and guidelines, evaluate the care and services they received during their hospital visit.

What is "percent positive" and why is it used?

Percent positive is the percentage of patients who submitted a positive response (e.g. for the overall ratings, it is the percentage of patients who responded good, very good and excellent). Percent positive is what NRCC uses when reporting aggregated patient satisfaction results to hospitals. A higher score means that more patients responded positively to the question.

Why don't I see my hospital listed on this site?

myhospitalcare.ca features information about every hospital in Ontario. However, there may be various reasons why you are not seeing a specific hospital you're looking for.

In the drop down menu under the hospital look-up tab, hospitals are listed by their corporation name and not by site. Every hospital site is included in the drop down menu, but they are listed by hospital corporation name first. (For example, St. Catherines General is listed under Niagara Health System - St. Catherines General Site.)

For specific indicators, you may not see a hospital because the hospital does not provide the service for which the indicator is related to. For example, the Centre for Addiction & Mental Health (CAMH) does not provide chronic and complex care, and therefore does not have data for chronic and complex care indicators.

Where the hospital has no data for an indicator, the hospital will not appear in the ratings for that indicator.

Who makes up my health care team?

From doctors, registered nurses and pharmacists to physiotherapists, occupational therapists and dieticians, any professional responsible for any aspect of your health can be considered a member of your health care team.
Other members could include nurse practitioners, respiratory therapists, social workers, speech language pathologists, audiologists, medical radiation and laboratory technologists, psychologists, midwives, dentists, optometrists, opticians, chiropodists, massage therapists, chiropractors, denturists, dental hygienists, and dental technologists.

How often will the site be updated?

The frequency of updates to the data can vary from one month to a year, or more. For example, some data, such as wait times from the Ontario Ministry of Health and Long-Term Care (MOHLTC), are being updated on a monthly basis on the MOHLTC website, whereas other data, such as mortality ratios from the Canadian Institute for Health Information (CIHI), have been updated on an annual basis since its first publication in 2007.

The data on myhospitalcare.ca may not be updated as frequently or quickly as it is on the website of original source. However, the reporting period of the values on myhospitalcare.ca are indicated. If you are looking for more recent data that may be available, you can click on the link to the website of original source that is provided at the end of each indicator definition.

How is the information on myhospitalcare.ca different from other public websites with hospital information?

All of the information on this site is available to the public by other means. Hospitals are required to publish annual reports and frequently participate in performance measurement surveys, but most of this information is designed by health care experts for health care experts. myhospitalcare.ca includes only information on individual hospitals that the Ontario Hospital Association (OHA) believes is of the greatest interest to the general public and makes it searchable by geographic area, hospital, type of care and type of indicator (for example, patient satisfaction).

There are other excellent websites out there that are currently open to the public. The Ministry of Health and Long-Term Care (MOHLTC) Wait Times website provides performance on individual hospitals for wait times for selected procedures. The Health Quality Ontario (HQO) provides a system level view of performance of Ontario’s healthcare system. Hospital Report’s Scorecard is nearing completion on a public website that will provide access to individual hospital performance results on the comprehensive list of indicators collected by Hospital Report.

How and why were the indicators that appear on myhospitalcare.ca selected?

The indicators on myhospitalcare.ca highlight information that is relevant to the patient experience – i.e. indicators we know members of the general public are most interested in. The indicators on this site specifically relate to quality of care – the highest priority for Ontarians.

The OHA has worked and continues to work closely with the University of Toronto Citizens’ Council to understand and to learn more about the hospital performance and quality indicators that patients find most important.

The OHA will hold public consultations in the future to ensure that myhospitalcare.ca continually captures the information that Ontario patients seek.

Why are there only Emergency Department wait times on this website and not wait times for procedures?

Emergency Department wait times and satisfaction are areas of great interest to the general public. Because the number of wait time indicators for procedures continues to multiply quickly, myhospitalcare.ca currently focuses on emergency department wait times and emergency department patient experience, which are both central to patients' overall care experiences. To view wait times for procedures, visit the Ontario Ministry of Health and Long-Term Care (MOHLTC) Wait Times website at www.health.gov.on.ca/en/public/programs/waittimes.

As myhospitalcare.ca continues to evolve, new indicators may be added to further inform patients about their hospital's performance.

I am having surgery soon and would like to see performance information about a particular procedure. Why isn't there data available for all procedures?

We are trying to be as comprehensive as possible, while remaining relevant for most people. The indicators you see on the site highlight information that is relevant to the patient experience and quality of care, which we know are the highest priorities for Ontarians.

As public reporting for Ontario hospitals progresses, this site will evolve. The OHA has worked and continues to work closely with the University of Toronto Citizens’ Council to understand and learn more about the hospital performance and quality indicators that patients find most important.

The OHA will also hold focus groups in the future to ensure that myhospitalcare.ca continues to capture the information that Ontario patients seek. If you are interested in participating in a focus group, please visit the feedback page and let us know.

Should I avoid a hospital that scores badly?

There are many factors that can cause indicator values to vary from hospital to hospital. Some of these factors, such as the diversity in patient characteristics and the populations served, are beyond a hospital’s control. The organizations collecting the data do apply some adjustment factors, as appropriate, to ensure meaningful comparisons. Still, a bad score should prompt you to ask why there are problems in that area. Talk to your health care team about what it could mean and how to find out more about whether this is a concern for you.

Does a hospital serving an elderly or at-risk population have a higher mortality ratio?

No. The differences in patient characteristics that vary among hospitals are very much taken into account.
In clinical research this is called risk-adjustment, where hospital data is adjusted to remove pre-existing influences. This issue is very important because patients with certain characteristics are less likely to receive some specific treatments or to have positive clinical outcomes than other groups. For example, if a hospital tends to serve a disproportionate number of such patients, it may be unfairly reported as having higher rates of undesirable events, when in fact, these rates may be comparable to another hospital with lower instances that simply serves a different population. Therefore, to improve hospital comparability, appropriate risk-adjustment techniques are used to adjust the data. That said, it is impossible to account for all of the differences in populations.

Why are there no indicator values for some hospital sites/locations?

There may be no indicator values for some hospitals for the following reasons:

- The data may be reported at the corporation level rather than the site level. For example, the hospital standardized mortality ratio and patient experience data for acute care, paediatric care, emergency care and rehabilitation care are reported at the corporation level.

- The indicator is not applicable to the hospital site. For example, some hospitals corporations may provide a certain service (e.g. emergency care) at only one of their hospital sites. In this case, N/A will appear next to the hospital sites where the indicator is not applicable.

Why is there no data for some hospitals?

There may be no data for some hospitals and the below designations may appear for the following reasons:

NR – Not Reportable: If the sample size is insufficient, the data is not reportable. In this case, NR will appear next to the hospital for the indicator. Note, if a hospital’s sample size is just under the appropriate sample size, an asterisk (*) appears next to the reported figure for acute care, emergency care, and paediatric care.

N/A – Not Applicable/Not Available: If there is no data from the previous year, or if the indicator is not applicable to a certain site/sites for the hospital corporations, N/A will be displayed.

Hospital Not Displayed: If the hospital does not provide the service or does not collect the data for a particular indicator, the indicator is not applicable. In this case, the hospital will not be displayed in the results for the indicator, even if the hospital was selected.

Why are there no provincial positive scores for complex and chronic care, mental health care, paediatric care and rehabilitation care?

For the complex and chronic care, mental health care, paediatric care and rehabilitation care sectors, there are not enough hospitals in the samples to produce provincial positive scores that accurately reflect the province as a whole.

Performance ratings on the website assess relative hospital performance and are available only for ED wait times and for acute care and emergency patient experience indicators.

ED wait times are a length of time, rather than rates based on a population, indicating that relative performance against the provincial average is an accurate reflection of whether a hospital's wait time is lower than, equal to or better than the average wait time in Ontario.

NRCC assesses relative hospital performance by calculating statistical significance. These statistical calculations were not performed on the patient safety indicators, and so performance ratings (and colour shadings) cannot be allocated to the hospitals' patient safety rates. And since only a small subset of provincial hospitals participated in the patient experience surveys for chronic and complex care, mental health care, paediatric care and rehabilitation care, it is not appropriate to allocate performance ratings (and colour shadings) to these indicators.

How does Ontario’s public reporting compare to public reporting in other jurisdictions?

Ontario hospitals are national leaders in transparency and accountability, meeting some of the most demanding accountability standards anywhere.

This is demonstrated through past participation in Hospital Report, compliance with transparency-oriented professional regulations, ongoing participation in accreditation processes, Hospital Service Accountability Agreements, the public reporting of patient safety and wait times indicators, and value-for-money audits by Ontario’s Auditor General. The Health Quality Ontario (HQO) also has a role in monitoring and reporting on the quality of the health system, highlighting what is working well and areas for improvement and supporting quality improvement across the system.

While most hospital performance information is available to the public, it is mainly used by health system leaders and stakeholders. Patients rarely access this material, and when they do, they often find it very technical and difficult to understand. Knowing that patients want to know more – and understand more – about their hospitals so that they can better understand their own health care, the OHA created myhospitalcare.ca.