TUESDAY, Aug. 26 (HealthDay News) -- France is doing it. Britain, the Netherlands and Norway are on their way.
And hospitals elsewhere should be doing it, too, namely moving toward all single rooms in newly built hospitals, argue the authors of a paper in the Aug. 27 issue of the Journal of the American Medical Association.
"[Previous studies] have shown that it does reduce infections, there is some evidence that it may reduce medication errors, the physician can talk to the patient in private, and the family can be there," said Jane Bolin, an associate professor of health policy and management at Texas A&M Health Science Center School of Rural Public Health in College Station. "I think hospitals are going that way."
According to background information in the article, multi-bed wards have been the norm in hospitals, with semi-private and private rooms reserved for those who could pay.
Now, single, double and four-bed rooms are the norm, though single rooms were signaled as the best way to deliver patient care almost a century ago.
Among the numerous benefits of private rooms, according to the authors, from Sunnybrook Health Sciences Centre and the University of Toronto in Canada:
A focus on single rooms would increase construction costs, with one study finding that the cost for building a new ward with only single-patient rooms would be $182 to $400 per patient, versus $122 to $500 per patient for a ward with double rooms.
But many of those costs are capital costs and would be recouped relatively quickly.
"Many people consider an expensive hotel room to be $300 to $500 per night, whereas the average cost per night in a hospital is $400 to $2,000," Bolin said. "About $40,000 in overall construction costs could be recouped, and it's not that much, considering the cost of equipment."
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Date last updated: 27 August 2008 |