In the past few years, hospitals have begun to focus more on privacy, noise control and acoustics. This concern goes beyond federal HIPAA (Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act) regulations, which mandate that patient information be kept confidential.
Another big reason is a new rule related to patient satisfaction that affects payments to hospitals. In 2010, the Affordable Care Act mandated the Center for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) patient satisfaction survey be used as one of the measures to calculate value-based incentive payments made by CMS to acute-care hospitals. Not surprisingly, hospitals are addressing consumer complaints in efforts to improve their ratings.
Acoustics is a category that patients are asked to rate in the CMS survey. According to Thomas Koenig, president, Dynasound, speech privacy is one of the top three issues for patients.
An article in the August issue of Building Operating Management addresses a number of ways hospitals are working to improve acoustics and noise control in healthcare facilities.
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