At least the cost of downtown Toronto parking and Tim Hortons coffee doesn’t lead to medical bankruptcy up here!
Welp 
maybe they jammed a second bed into a room that’s usually a single? There was one TV, and the other guy had the remote. It was in line with the curtain between the two of them, so both could watch. There was also only one nice visitor seat, which was also his roommate’s. One of the nurses dragged in another chair for me.
My mom stayed in a ward with half a dozen women for one of her child births, and she said she liked that. She never felt alone (which made her anxious), the nurses came by often, and there were enough people that you didn’t feel like you were “with” any of them.
She actually requested a roommate on one of her stays (at a place that had both single and double rooms) but they had put her in a single, and there she stayed.
The local ‘best’ hospital - Miriam in Providence, RI - is just starting a major reconstruction of their oldest wing, with this explanation:
“Nearly 70 percent of The Miriam Hospital’s licensed medical surgical beds are semi-private, causing inefficiencies and throughput issues. On average, 33 inpatient beds in semi-private rooms go underutilized due to patient condition, lack of privacy, isolation needs, gender, and fall risk. The new construction will address this issue by adding private rooms on the second and third floors of the building, significantly improving patient care and hospital efficiency.”
Where do you live?
Every hospital I worked at, from the early 1990s to 2012, was private rooms only, except for things like recovery rooms, which had curtains between the beds. This was in the USA.
I don’t think there is a “norm”. Based on my family’s experiences a number of factors come into play:
- The age of the facility - new hospitals or wings are more likely to have private rooms.
- Condition being treated - even in older hospitals where shared rooms there are conditions which would warrant a private room. My daughter was born in an older hospital but the maternity ward had converted to all private rooms.
- Teaching vs. regular hospital - teaching hospitals that family members have been in are more likely to have private rooms. Maybe HIPAA? Much harder to have a discreet discussion about a patient’s condition when there is a gaggle of interns or residents crowding around.
- Non-profit vs. for-profit hospital (don’t get me started, I’ve already been warned about ranting about for-profit medicine in FQ). Anecdote: The two times Mrs. Martian was overnight in a for-profit hospital the rooms were shared (including earlier this year)
- How busy the hospital is, and what their room filling algorithm is. Anecdote: When my son was born (scheduled C-section) the hospital was so crowded that not only did Mrs. Martian not get a private room, she couldn’t get a room at all - she wen from recovery to a bed in the hall and was sent home that evening. After a C-section. (Someone had broken a mercury sphygmomanometer in one of the rooms, plus there was a record number of births that day.)
Fun (but irrelevant) anecdote: I recently found the hospital bill from when I was born. My dad sprung for the extra $10.50 per night so my mom would have a private room for the four nights she was in the hospital. Brought the total hospital bill (listed as “Nursing, room and board”) to a whopping $38.00 per night.
Yeah, I’m old.
:
The hospitals associated with Mayo Clinic are all private rooms, even though many were built as doubles. Patient privacy, noise levels, and more equipment needed are certainly reasons, plus it’s a teaching hospital, so rooms can get filled with staff. Another major reason is patient satisfaction. They work hard on “best” rankings, so that’s part of it for them. They’re less price sensitive than most hospitals, and justify their prices because of their overall care; room costs are probably a very small part of the total cost.
https://health.usnews.com/best-hospitals/area/mn/mayo-clinic-6610451
Accusations of profiteering aside….
From a medical standpoint single rooms reduce the spread of infections and also permit better rest for the patient, which is believed to help healing and recovery. There is, so far as I know, no medical benefit to sharing a room with someone else (aside from exceptions like a mother and newborn being together).
They do cost more.
Couple of data points:
My father had major surgery in 2003 and 2024 in the same hospital. In 2004 he was in recovery for three days in a large room with many (at least 5) patients separated by curtains. In 2024 he was in recovery for less than two days in a private room. As far as I could tell there were only private rooms in that facility now.
My sister gave birth in the same hospital in 1997 as her daughter in law did this year. Again, she was in a semi-private room after the birth. In 2025 my niece-in-law (?) was in a private room. Again, I think all the rooms were private rooms.
Hmm. I was in the hospital in April - and had a roommate (actually, a couple of them - I was there for several days and the roommates switched a few times).
It’s apparently location specific. Memphis is a regional medical center with several large hospitals. I’ve never visited anyone in the last, say, 20 or so years who didn’t have a private room and just assumed that’s the way it is now. The only semi-private rooms I’ve seen were at various nursing/rehab facilities my mother was in and out of during the last few years of her life.
Even with nursing homes, I think the choice of private vs semi-private rooms depends on what kind of insurance you have. Medicare/Medicaid patients aren’t going to get private rooms.
Though now that I think of it, I was in the same hospital twice in the 2010s - in a private room both times. Factors beyond my ken are no doubt involved
Here in Oz every new hospital whether public or private is exclusively private rooms. Older hospitals still have shared rooms, but are becoming less common as they either renovate or rebuild.
The old idea was a ward where the nurses desk had view of everything and in principle kept an eye on everyone. In the modern world machines that go ping do a better job. Moreover hospitals are much less about nursing care and much more about managing acute problems, be they surgical, trauma, or serious illness. Patients laying around in bed recovering for days or weeks is not something they want. Modern medical practice has changed this a lot.
Infection control becomes more important as drug resistant bacteria become ever present. Hospitals are about the best place to pick one up as it is. So that drives the need for isolation harder than in the past.
Private rooms are not universally popular. I know a few older nurses who miss the central station overlooking a ward of beds.
Post surgical recovery rooms and intensive care units still tend to be wards. A central oversight works there.
I recently had an elderly family member who
stayed a month in a rehab facility, part of a private nursing/assisted-living facility.(after hip surgery)
The rehab wing is new, and was built specifically to meet Medicare rules, so the rooms had to be semi-private (2 people per room) . But the patients still had privacy, due to good architectural design: Each room was shaped like an L.
The beds were in separate branches of the L, and could not see each other. The room was big enough, with the bathroom in the middle, that each side of the L felt like a private room.
My last two day stays this year had me in private rooms and my stay during Covid was private. But 13 years ago when I was recovering from a stabbing I shared a room for days, that sucked. The hospital was at capacity and I recall a guy in the hallway crying out for the police half the night while they waited for a room. That was hell.
I grew up with sisters and brothers. I don’t mind sleeping in a dormitory. The whole curtains and privacy thing is just an irritating distraction for me.
But my kid has been brought up with modern conceptions of privacy and body shame, and would feel more comfortable in a private room, even if there weren’t the well known and documented infection control / patient outcome reasons.
None of the hospitals I ever worked at used method of payment as a way of determining what kind of treatment the patient got, and that included a private vs. shared room.
I’ve certainly heard all manner of horror stories from people in past generations, where insured Caucasian patients got private or semi-private rooms, and “colored” patients, and/or those who were charity cases, were placed in open wards with multiple roommates.
Nursing homes are more likely to have patients share rooms, and the socialization thing is part of the reason why.
I’ve had hospital stays twice, once in the US for 5 days about 40 years ago, and once in the UK for one night about 6 years ago. In the US I was in a double room but the second bed wasn’t always occupied. In the UK it was a cardiac hospital and the ward had 8 beds with just 3 of them occupied. The door was open so the nurses at the nurses station could hear the various alarms going off. This meant that I could hear all the alarms going off up and down the hallway. Between that and one room-mate snoring and farting loudly all night I slept very little.
My late wife had a number of stays in the 2010s in a hospital building that was built in the 1970s and had been cosmetically renovated, but not structurally improved. The cancer ward was all private rooms. But they were clearly designed for 2 people. Over time I became very familiar with the interior of that building.
A few years ago I was admitted to the same hospital, needing to be observed before urgent, not emergent, surgery the next day. Different floor, same exact room footprint. I had a roommate. I was essentially healthy & chipper, but for my issue. The old man in the other bed seemingly was in the last week(s) of life. And not going quietly. He survived my night with him, but it was a major PITA for me.