Chefs, Butlers, Marble Baths: Hospitals Vie for the Affluent

[no_hypocrisy]

The feverish patient had spent hours in a crowded emergency room. When she opened her eyes in her Manhattan hospital room last winter, she recalled later, she wondered if she could be hallucinating: “This is like the Four Seasons — where am I?”

The bed linens were by Frette, Italian purveyors of high-thread-count sheets to popes and princes. The bathroom gleamed with polished marble. Huge windows displayed panoramic East River views. And in the hush of her $2,400 suite, a man in a black vest and tie proffered an elaborate menu and told her, “I’ll be your butler.”

It was Greenberg 14 South, the elite wing on the new penthouse floor of NewYork-Presbyterian/Weill Cornell hospital. Pampering and décor to rival a grand hotel, if not a Downton Abbey, have long been the hallmark of such “amenities units,” often hidden behind closed doors at New York’s premier hospitals. But the phenomenon is escalating here and around the country, health care design specialists say, part of an international competition for wealthy patients willing to pay extra, even as the federal government cuts back hospital reimbursement in pursuit of a more universal and affordable American medical system.

-snip-

A waterfall, a grand piano and the image of a giant orchid grace the soaring ninth floor atrium of McKeen, leading to refurbished rooms that, like those in the hospital’s East 68th Street penthouse, cost patients $1,000 to $1,500 a day, and can be combined. That fee is on top of whatever base rate insurance pays to the hospital, or the roughly $4,500 a day that foreigners are charged, according to the hospital’s international services department.




http://www.nytimes.com/2012/01/22/nyregion/chefs-butlers-and-marble-baths-not-your-average-hospital-room.html?_r=1&hpw

[Tunkamerica]

1. Blue Ivy got Reiki on the way out

[wilt the stilt]

2. when was the last time you were in the hospital

if insurance is paying you are really sick. Your not sitting up like this women.

[tanyev]

3. Nice. No having to watch someone die on the floor in the ER waiting area, either.

[Scuba]

4. They keep costs down by using child labor for janitors, nurses aides, etc.

[Ilsa]

5. I'll not volunteer to staff that floor.

The last thing I wanted to do when I got my nursing license was take orders from a rich hypochondriac. That does nothing to service mankind.

And here I thought that that illness, accidents, disease, and death were the great equalizers. I couldn't have been more wrong.

[ProdigalJunkMail]

6. i think they meant 'effluent'...

since we are having septic problems right now this seems more correct.

sP

[SammyWinstonJack]

7. Lavish hospital suites and concierge doctors. It's good to be among the 1%