Hospital noise: How bad is it?

Abstract

The noise in hospitals has been growing monotonically since at least 1960, and noise is now a top complaint of patients, staff, and visitors. Hospital noise sources are of many types, including HVAC noise from required high air flows, equipment noise from machines such as MRI units, alarms from equipment at patient bedsides, pneumatic tube lab transport systems, PA systems, and speech absolutely everywhere. In 2006, the federal government introduced the Hospital Consumer Assessment of Healthcare Providers and Systems (HCAHPS) as a standardized survey to measure patient perception of the quality of care received. Results of the survey are publicly available for each of the over 5500 hospitals in the United States. The first analysis of results showed that the lowest score received by U.S. hospitals in aggregate was the single acoustics question which asks whether patients found their room sufficiently quiet to allow for sleep at night. With the threat of decrease of federal compensation unless they show im...