Researchers at the University of Michigan have published their findings of a recent study, which sought to better understand whether certain hospital room features impact mortality and length of stay after surgery.
“We were fascinated to see from a previous study that mortality was different in rooms that were in the line of sight of a nurse’s station. Nurses could more readily assess the patient’s condition and intervene more quickly in severe events. We wanted to see how this finding would play out at our institution, specifically in a surgical population,” said study coauthor Mitchell J. Mead, a health and design scholar at the University of Michigan. “One of the next big steps for healthcare design is to understand these pathways of causation that can lead to different clinical outcomes in patients staying in hospital rooms with different features.”
For the study, patient rooms were coded based on their features — window or no window, single occupancy, double occupancy, distance to the nursing station and line of sight to clinicians. Patient encounters were linked by room number to identify clinical outcomes, including mortality and length of stay, related to room design.
Key findings include:
- Mortality rates for high-risk procedures varied across room design features and room type
- Room features that influenced clinical outcomes after surgery included distance from a nursing station, single-room occupancy and having a direct line of sight where clinicians can see into the room
- After adjusting for patient comorbidities and complexity of the operation, mortality rates were 20% higher if patients were admitted to a hospital room without a window than if they were put in a room with a window
- For patients staying in a room without a window, 30-day mortality rates were 10% higher
