Tom Murphy
RedwoodAge.com

If you've ever spent the night in a hospital - most boomers have, and almost all of us will - you know it leaves a lot to be desired.

Even the nicest hospitals have the ambiance of a science lab. Nurses may smile and family members may bring flowers, but it just isn't a pleasant experience.

An upgraded hospital room designed by Wellness Environments.

When you add that with the germs lurking in the nooks and crannies of the room, you have a recipe for bigger problems. It's really no wonder that one in five Medicare patients end up right back in the hospital within a month of discharge.

Nursing homes can be worse. And the depression of living long-term amid cold steel hospital beds, linoleum floors and artificial light can turn the last years of life into the worst years of life.

Happily, the are some efforts to change all this. And boomers, with their daunting $2 trillion in market power, can help push for change.

As RedwoodAge reported recently, a project call the Nursing Home of the Future is busily trying out alternatives. The project, based in a group called the Business Innovation Factory, hopes to develop a better nursing home before the number of Americans needing them triple to 87 million over the next 20 years.

The project is working on everything from room design to clothing, from medications to exercise, to find a better and more economical way to accommodate aging boomers.

Here and now, companies like Nashville-based Wellness Enivronments are rethinking the plain old hospital room, saying hospitals can save millions of dollars by adopting designs better-suited to the needs of patients, staff and family members.

"Imagine something as basic and simple as a patient's hospital room being able to make patients recover faster, return to their homes and families quicker, and improve patient satisfaction all at the same time," company Chairman Victor Rumore told attendees at a health care conference recently. "Then imagine a room that empowers patients and gives them more control over their environment, a room that nurses love to work in because they can be more productive, a user-friendly room for all hospital caregivers."

Patient Control
What make his room design so special? Well, for starters, there's aesthetics. Rumore's hospital room looks more like a luxury hotel, with simulated wood-grain panels covering equipment on the walls, a bed that doesn't "glint" when you see it, indirect ventilation and lighting that is designed more for patient comfort than for industrial illumination. There are even adjustable reading lights at the the top of the bed (what a concept!).

A fancier remote control allows patients to adjust just about anything from drawing the drapes to muting the TV volume.

All the edges and corners are rounded, which means there are far fewer crannies where germs can hide from a cleaning crew. The bathroom sink, for example, has rounded modular plastic "corners" instead of the 90-degree intersection of Formica found in most hospitals.

Visitors aren't restricted to a stiff plastic chair. Instead, there are recliners and even sofabeds that make it easier for them to stay longer. There are even recessed shelves to hold flowers, picture frames and gifts, which tend to crowd the flimsy shelves or lightweight tabletops found in many modern hospitals.

Well Stocked
For attendants, the rooms includes generous storage for supplies, reducing the number of trips that nurses and orderlies need to make to retrieve a drip tube or bandages.

Sure, you say, that sounds nice. But can hospitals afford than when health care costs are already out of control? Rumore said the modular designs lead to a 50 percent increase in time to completing hospital remodeling projects.

"This revolutionary patient room can be built in days instead of weeks, generating revenues long before traditional rooms are completed," said Rumore, whose company has installed about 500 rooms since it started up in 1996. "If the needs of the hospital change and the room must be converted for another purpose, the room is flexible and relocatable."

When that's added to easier cleaning and fewer in-hospital infections, he said, the cost savings can run into the millions for hospitals

."We believe that hospitals should be 100 percent committed to being patient-focused," said Rumore, "because if you are patient-focused, everything else falls into place."