The Bureau of Health Information's latest survey showed that 83 per cent of patients admitted to hospitals in the Illawarra Shoalhaven Local Health District (ISLHD) during 2013 thought doctors and nurses were "always" kind and caring.

Other patients found the health professionals "sometimes" kind and caring, while just 2 per cent stated that doctors were not kind and caring; and just 1 per cent found nurses lacking.

The majority of patients (84 per cent) felt they were treated with "dignity and respect" at the region's public hospitals according to the NSW Patient Survey Program that was released publicly on Wednesday.

Overall, 89 per cent of patients rated their experience at ISLHD hospitals as "very good" or "good", 8 per cent thought it was "adequate" and 2 per cent felt it was "poor" or "very poor".

Patients were mostly content with the level of cleanliness at the region's hospitals, with 97 per cent reporting the ward or room in which they stayed was "very clean" or "fairly clean"; and 94 per cent claiming the toilets and bathrooms they used were clean.

Hospital food fared pretty well - just over 60 per cent thought it was either very good or good; 24 per cent thought it was "neither good nor poor", while 14 per cent thought it was poor.

Bureau of Health Information chief executive Dr Jean-Frederic Levesque said the survey of 35,000 patients gathered information about their experience of care at 80 NSW public hospitals.

He said the results would help the state's hospitals identify areas where patients felt they were performing well and where improvements to patient experience could be made.