With a mandate to promote and improve patient safety, person-centred care, and health service quality in Alberta, Health Quality Alberta saw a need to update the definition of quality used in the Alberta Quality Matrix for Health (Matrix) adopted in 2005.
As a replacement for the Matrix, this resource revised the common definition of quality as seen at the centre of an integrated people-centred health system.
How the updated quality dimensions can be used
The quality dimensions act as a lens through which people’s experience in the health system can be viewed. They guide the user in reflecting on people’s needs and how care should be experienced by people.
The dimensions can be applied at system, organizational, and care-delivery levels, informing policy, strategy, and design for the system and giving organizations and teams a common language that shifts thinking and practice toward integrated people-centred care.
In May 2026, revisions were made to two dimensions: safe and equitable.
Safe: Now more clearly emphasizes that safe care is something people experience, while continuing to emphasize the many types of harm people can experience. Revisions provide more information about the different approaches to safe care that exist.
Equitable: Revisions have deepened the focus on the historic and current factors that have created unequal access to care. The definition now also calls attention to inequities with the health workforce and clarifies what is meant by the term ‘culture.’
Building on the updated definition of quality, the Framework for an Integrated People-centred Health System provides an evidence-based model and whole-system approach to move beyond a focus on disease toward systems and services organized around the full spectrum of people’s and communities’ needs.
A whole-system approach emphasizes the many enabling conditions and practices that need to be present for a system to deliver integrated people-centred care. For this reasons, the Framework for an Integrated People-centred Health System has three interconnected parts: quality dimensions, enablers, and shared responsibilities. Each part has its own role, but none works on its own. Their interdependence is what supports progress toward integrated people-centred care.