What Patients Want: Private Rooms

You don’t have to be able to read minds like Mel Gibson’s character in What Women Want to know that patients today aren’t interested in sharing rooms. They want private rooms where they can recuperate in peace, and hospitals are giving them what they want, either by building new patient towers or renovating their existing facilities.

Take Massachusetts General Hospital, for example. Currently, most of its rooms are shared. The hospital hopes to change that; it’s seeking approval to build two connected towers with 450 spacious private rooms. The price tag for the new towers: a cool $1 billion.

“People’s expectations have changed,” said Dr. Peter Slavin, president of Mass. General. “Being in a double room in this day and age is not something people welcome.”

Across the city, Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center is constructing 158 new single rooms, while Boston Children’s Hospital plans to convert all of its doubles into private rooms in the coming years.

The trend of private rooms isn’t exclusive to Boston. In Minnesota, The Mayo Clinic recently built dozens of new private rooms as part of a $200-plus million renovation of its Rochester campus. Likewise, Pittsburgh-based UPMC system is spending $2 billion on three new specialty hospitals with all private rooms.

Beyond patient satisfaction, hospitals have some solid reasons to focus on private rooms. One is logistical—hospitals don’t mix patients of different genders. Safety is another reason—it’s easier to prevent patients from catching infections when they’re not in close contact with other sick people.

The good news for both patients and providers is that insurers now commonly pay the same rates for both shared and private rooms.

For questions, comments or concerns, please contact Jennifer Duell Popovec