The case for buying better hospital gowns

Facility concerns over patient experience scores may finally get hospitals to pony up the extra cost for more expensive—and less revealing—hospital gowns.

STAT reports many hospitals still prefer the traditional tie-in-the-back gowns because they allow for easier clinician access to a patient’s body and, perhaps most importantly, they’re cheaper than the available alternatives. But some stakeholders are seeing a change in gown design and greater acceptance from hospitals that ditching the old gowns is worth the extra cost.

“It’s time to truly treat patients with the respect they deserve and not put them in a dependent, submissive position—starting with a gown that can be a symbol of becoming a faceless patient rather than an individual with a name and a history and a specific need,” said Harlan Krumholz, MD, professor of medicine at Yale University and director of Yale-New Haven Hospital’s center for outcomes research and evaluation.

Hackensack University Medical Center in New Jersey said its new gowns, which include scrub pants for some patients, cost slightly more than $15 apiece. The annual cost to replenish the gowns is $192,000—double the $96,000 for the old versions.

“For most hospitals, with declining reimbursements, people want to immediately go to [eliminating] these kinds of things when they want to cut costs,” said Hackensack’s chief experience officer, Nancy Cororan-Davidoff. “But we made a commitment.”

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