I’ve been a visitor to quite a few hospitals over the past decade due to aging parents and in laws. In every case, they’ve had a private room. As a child of the 60’s, it seems that most rooms were semi private and that private rooms were only for those that could afford it.
Has something changed?
Perhaps in some places, but not in my local hospital. All I’ve seen there are two or occasionally four patients in a room. Perhaps newer hospitals now offer them to justify their high costs.
I wonder how much of a cost savings it really is to put two people in a larger room versus one person in a smaller room. I know that if I was ever hospitalized, I would vastly prefer my own room. I have some vague recollection of visiting someone and the person in the next bed moaning in pain constantly.
My local hospital built in the mid 1970s only has private rooms.
I’m only familiar with hospital rooms in Toronto, Canada. In my experience, the hospital reserves single rooms for infectious patients first; even though our insurance would pay for a private room, none were available (on multiple occasions).
Yup, that’s definitely an issue.
Yeah. I spent almost two weeks in a hospital a few years back, and the last week or so, I had a series of bad roommates, who all kept me awake almost all night. I barely slept for about five days straight, and was on the verge of a breakdown before the doctors said I could go home.
By the end of it, I was actually nostalgic for my first two roommates, who just quietly died in the same room as me. Even the one of them who had about 3-4 family members with him nearly 24 hours a day wasn’t as bad.
In my most recent hospital stays over the past two years I was in a private room. As I recall each of those stays was the result of an ER visit because of a heart condition, which may have been a factor in getting a private room.
I’ve been in numerous hospitals. Never had a roommate.
I would imagine the Covid/pandemic scare stopped any of it left over. Around here.
I do remember my brother, as a youngster had his tonsils out. He was in the tonsil ward, in a Navy hospital.
Not sure I saw it, may just just have been a family tale that I heard of.
A family member was in a hospital bed for a few days over this past summer, and had a room to themself. I asked my daughter, who is a nurse at that hospital, about the solo room. She said in many cases, the patient may be put in an area where others are being treated for similar issues, so the doctors, nurses, staff (people familiar with specific treatment), and any specialized equipment will be close together rather than scattered everywhere. The family member happened to have a condition that happened to be treated in a newer wing of the hospital, where there were only single rooms.
As to why they built a hospital wing with only single rooms, I don’t know. Maybe the hospital can charge more for them?
I have spent more time in hospitals in the last decade than I care to, between elderly family members and my own adventures.
I do agree that the newer hospitals I’ve been in seem to be all private rooms. Both of my parents have been admitted several times to their local hospital in recent years – in fact, my mother is in that hospital right now – and that hospital building was probably built no later than the 1960s. AFAICT, most of the rooms are double occupancy, but any of the times that my mom has been admitted there in recent years, she’s not had a roommate (even though there’s another bed in there). I don’t know if it’s just that the hospital isn’t at capacity, or it’s the policy now to only double up patients in a room if necessary.
I wonder if HIPPA is a factor, at least in the US? When I was in the hospital, I learned a lot about the other person’s health just by being in the room while they were having a crisis. Couldn’t really be avoided, when it’s all happening just on the other side of a curtain.
It’s possible, though it looks like HIPAA (please note the correct spelling 
) does not mandate private rooms – though I would imagine that private rooms do make compliance with HIPAA somewhat easier.
As this cite notes:
Considering the cost of lawsuits, it wouldn’t surprise me if a lot of hospitals just figured to do more than the minimum, just to cover themselves.
I think patient privacy and infection control are reasons to prefer private rooms. Also, there’s a lot more stuff around a patient these days than in decades prior, so sufficient room for two patients fifty years ago might not be enough for both today. And if you have a choice between two hospitals, you might opt for the one with private rooms.
That might not be the choice - my husband recently had surgery and his private room was roughly the same size as every semi-private room I’ve ever seen.But because of the surgery he had, he needed a recliner and a bed, and you couldn’t fit two of each in the room. When I was hospitalized and tested positive for COVID ( not because of COVID) I needed a “private room” - which in that hospital was a semi-private room with only one patient.
There is no private right of action for HIPAA violations, so it’s not fear of lawsuits (HIPAA lawsuits, anyway) that’s driving this. Yes, the US can bring an enforcement action, but I’m guessing that’s extremely rare. [I just googled it, and it seems that most of the cases involve sale of paitient data, data breach, or the like. Not situations like a shared room in a hospital]
Two of my last three hospitalizations were for a heart condition, but I had a roommate for both. The third was for RSV, and I had a private room. A weird one. Quite large with a lot of stuff in it. I wondered if it was a room that was not normally used, but that they needed to isolate me, so they put me in it.
The room that I’m currently sitting in is similar to most that I’ve seen recently. It has room and hookups for 2 beds but only one patient bed and one guest bed. There’s nothing on the ceiling to support a curtain though.
My husband had a roommate in each of his last two hospitalizations. Both hospitals were full enough that he had to wait to get a bed at all. The first had several people in private rooms. I have no idea how they decide.
One of his roommates was a problem for him, watching sports on the TV they shared all day, and crying out in fear and confusion many times during the night, keeping my husband awake. The other was cranky any unhappy, but not really a problem for my husband.
Shared TV? The hospitals I’ve visited have had individual TVs for each patient bed, even in shared rooms.