The days when hospital wards consisted of twenty adjacent beds are long gone. While many hospitals in the U.S. still have shared patient rooms, others are working towards renovating their units into exclusively private, single-patient rooms.

The benefits and costs of single-patient rooms have been well documented. Studies suggest that these types of rooms can drastically reduce hospital-acquired infections. Patients that share space in a semi-private room also share their microbes and germs. When nurses and doctors are treating patients in a shared room, they are less likely to wash their hands between patients than when they leave the room to treat patients in other rooms. Moreover, private rooms are much easier to clean and decontaminate during and after each patient’s stay than semi-private ones.

Patient safety is also drastically improved when patients are treated in private rooms. Often, medical errors are due to providers’ distractions, interruptions and lapses in concentration, and these are more likely to happen when there is more than one patient in the room. It is much harder for providers to keep track of medications, monitors and procedures when two or more patients are in such close proximity to each other.

Single-patient rooms do not only improve patient care, they also improve patient satisfaction by allowing for more privacy. Not having to share a small space with another patient and his/her visitors allows a more comfortable environment where a patient can feel more at home and relax. As a result of this privacy, the emotional and psychological well being is improved, and ultimately recovery times are shorter and overall health is greatly improved.

Obviously, converting all shared rooms to single-patient rooms can be very costly and sometimes impractical for certain hospitals. However, the evidence suggests that the savings in terms of reduced infections and errors and the improvements in quality and satisfaction are well worth the investment. So next time your doctor is admitting you to a hospital, make sure to ask him for one that has private rooms.