Hospital patients generally have lower infection rates and require shorter hospital stays if they are housed in private rooms rather than semiprivate rooms
Yet in Woodville' s hospital, which has only semiprivate rooms, infection rates and length of stays are typically the same as in several nearby hospitals where most of the rooms are private, even though patients served by these hospitals are very similar to those served by Woodville' s hospital
Most of the nearby hospitals were built within the last 10 years, whereas Woodville's hospital was built about 50 years ago.