Got tired of clunky AHS pages, so I built a free real-time Alberta hospital tracker. It calculates drive times + ER wait times to find the fastest path to care.
Hey everyone,
(This was approved by the mods prior to posting.)
We live in the Edmonton area. There are many hospitals around, and I've often wondered: Should we drive to a further hospital in search of lower wait times? The answer seems to be yes, most of the time, if you can.
I built this site after my mom waited over 12 hours in the ER for a broken arm—yet another highlight of our broken system in Alberta. The website has no tracking, no ads, and no monetization:
👉 https://alberta-hospital-wait-times.pages.dev/
Here is what it tracks:
- Live ER & Urgent Care Waits: Auto-refreshes estimated wait times every 10 minutes from AHS feeds. If you enable location, it estimates drive times using open routing so you can see the fastest path to care near you.
- Community Lab & Imaging Wait Times: Live walk-in and appointment wait times for APL labs across Calgary, Edmonton, and rural zones, alongside CIHI diagnostic imaging targets.
- Active Service Disruptions: A daily updated map and feed of temporary facility closures, bed shutdowns, and clinical emergency advisories across the province.
- Surgical Backlogs & Primary Care: Breakdown of surgical waitlists by specialty, family doctor acceptance rates, and primary care access indicators.
- Public Health & Wastewater: Respiratory case counts and PHAC wastewater early-warning monitors.
- Regional Equity & Health Spending: Deeper data modules breaking down health disparities across Alberta’s Local Geographic Areas and per-capita healthcare spending compared to other provinces.
A few notes on how it was built:
It’s built with React 19, Vite, and Tailwind. Behind the scenes, an Express backend runs 28 automated scrapers and data pipelines that pull directly from AHS, CIHI, HQCA, StatsCan, and Open Alberta feeds, pushing updates to Cloudflare edge storage so pages load fast on mobile.
GitHub link if anyone is so inclined: https://github.com/thatdaveguy1/Alberta-Hospital-Wait-Times
I’d love to hear feedback if this is useful, and if you see room for improvement!
Disclaimer: This tracker is unofficial and not affiliated with Alberta Health Services. In an emergency, call 911. I cannot be responsible for data errors, website problems, or Alberta Health Services data feeds.