Patient-provider collaboration is considered crucial to successful patient care. However, while many CSCW and health informatics studies have focused on collaborative care incorporating patient awareness in chronic care management, very little attention has been given to emergency care. I am conducting a qualitative study of patient care trajectories in an emergency department (ED), examining patient awareness, decision-making and patient-clinician interaction in an information-imbalanced environment, particularly in situations of information deprivation. My research will enrich understandings of collaborative care practices in a hospital setting and can inform extended designs of the current provider-centric, socio-technical systems to incorporate patient-provider collaboration.