Hospitals are wooing patients with gourmet food, posh pillows, lobby waterfalls, original art and valet parking. Amenities are important aspects of the business model, according to an article on the Dallas News website.

Patients sometimes care more about comfort than a hospital’s medical outcomes, according to John Romley, a research assistant professor at the University of Southern California’s Price School of Public Policy.

Romley sees the trend developing independant of the safety and cost-cutting focus of government policies.  And as long as amenities are important to patients, hospital administrators will spend on comfort.

Romley's research suggests patients have changed their decision-making on where they get hospital care. Once it was all based on a physician’s recommendation, and physicians tended to choose hospitals where they practiced. But many primary care physicians no longer even see their patients in the hospital, the article said.

Read the article.