“Evidence-based hospital design” is changing the shape and configuration of hospital patient rooms in order to reduce hospital-acquired infections and adverse events and promote patient healing, reports The New York Times. The article profiles hospitals that have redesigned patient rooms to let in more natural light and shut out noise, adding handrails next to bed headboards to prevent falls, and installing locked cabinets in each room that contain only the patient’s medications to eliminate drug errors. The rooms are also situated so nurses can more easily see the patients and are private and large enough so that visitors linger.
Insurers, however, want evidence that the changes will positively affect “quality and safety and efficiency,” America’s Health Insurance Plans told the Times. Currently over 1,500 studies have been done to prove the point that design can affect patient outcomes. One study at Bronson Methodist Hospital in Kalamazoo, Mich., reduced hospital-acquired infections by 11 percent through private rooms, better air-flow design, and strategically located sinks. Sacred Heart Medical Center at RiverBend in Springfield, Ore., cut staff injuries from moving patients from 10 a year to one by putting ceiling lifts into patient rooms. “It’s possible that old hospitals where the nurses and the staff are great can succeed in the worst environment. But they have great obstacles to overcome,” Anjali Joseph, director of research at the nonprofit Center for Health Design, told the Times.
