More Ohio hospitals only offering private rooms

More hospitals around the state are only offering private rooms for hospital stays, including the new Dublin Methodist Hospital, Mount Carmel's New Albany Surgical Hospital, and the Ohio State University's Richard M. Ross Heart Hospital. (Source: "Hospitals offering more private rooms," Columbus Dispatch, Nov. 18, 2007.) With the price difference between a private room and a semiprivate shared room being $30 a day or more, Medicaid, Medicare and many private health insurance plans won't cover private rooms when there is a choice. However, if there is no choice these same plans allow private rooms, although Medicare and Medicaid only pay the semiprivate room rate and do not allow hospitals to charge the patient the difference.

According to Kelly McGivern, president of the Ohio Association of Health Plans, private rooms are an unnecessary luxury that "create high patient expectations and add to rising health-care costs." However, Rick Wade, senior vice president of the American Hospital Association, said hospitals nationwide are moving toward all-private rooms, which more readily allow hospitals to "comply with federal privacy rules, allow the medical staff to perform more bedside procedures and reduce infections."