The Weyburn General Hospital, along with St. Joseph's Hospital in Estevan and community hospitals in Arcola, Kipling and Redvers, were rated as good as, or better, than the provincial average in a survey conducted by the Saskatchewan Health Quality Council (HQC).

The results of the survey, conducted with input from patients between September 2004 and January 2005, was released on Tuesday morning by the HQC. The results were culled from the responses of roughly 5,000 patient surveys throughout the province.

Patients were asked to rate overall care and impressions, overall doctor care, trust in nurses, pain control, perception of medical error, responsiveness, respect and courtesy, and provider-patient communications.

Sun Country hospitals rated higher than the provincial average on nine of these issues.

On overall care, Sun Country hospitals received a rating of 81 per cent, compared to a province-wide rating of 76 per cent.

Responsiveness was rated 87, compared to the provincial 84 per cent rating.

Respect and courtesy was rated 88 per cent, compared to the provincial 85 per cent rating.

For trust of nurses and overall pain control, the region's rating was 76 and 78 per cent respectively, one percentage point higher than the provincial rating. This was also true for overall impressions, which rated 86 per cent in Sun Country.

Roughly 1.7 per cent of patients in Sun Country said they believed they suffered a medical error, compared to 3.3 per cent province-wide. They rated overall doctor care at 77 per cent, the same as the provincial rating.

Community hospitals rated better than district hospitals such as Weyburn.

Dr. Ben Chan, CEO for the Health Quality Council, said in a news release that the survey is an excellent tool for finding out what is working for patients, and where they feel care could be improved.

"We would like to see even more patients choosing very good or excellent responses in subsequent surveys," said Chan.

"We want to work with regions to address areas where care might not be meeting patient expectations. The lower scores on provider-patient communications, for example, suggest we may need supports and systems to ensure we're doing a better job with this aspect of health care."

The patient survey is a first for the province, though Ontario has conducted patient surveys since 1998.