Private rooms priority at MGH

Massachusetts General Hospital plans to add 150 private rooms as part of a multimillion-dollar expansion, responding to the growing number of patients who don't want a roommate or are too sick to have one.

Many hospitals are converting doctors' sleeping quarters, offices, and entire buildings into single rooms to accommodate patients who need isolation for medical reasons or to prevent the spread of infection. Boston hospitals rarely have more than 50 percent of their nonintensive care beds in private rooms. At Mass. General, just 26 percent, or 159, of the 611 beds for adult surgical and medical patients are in single rooms.

''When a patient is hospitalized, it's one of the most sensitive times in their lives," said Jeanette Ives Erickson, the hospital's chief nurse. ''There are patients who are dying and family wants to stay with them. There are patients who are confused or too noisy for a roommate."

The lack of enough private rooms forces the hospital to leave beds empty in double rooms. Of the hospital's 902 beds of all types, 40 each day, on average, are unavailable because the other patient in the room requires isolation for medical or other reasons. And when patients request a single room just because they want peace and quiet, ''we're all too often saying to them that we don't have one," Erickson said.

As a result, the hospital last week filed with the City of Boston a 10-year master building plan that includes the additional private rooms on five floors of a new 10-story building. Insurers generally pay the same for a patient to stay in a private room or a double room.

The building would be located on Fruit Street, between Massachusetts Eye and Ear Infirmary and the main entrance to the hospital. It would replace two older ones and would be 182 feet tall, similar to the height of the new Yawkey Center for Outpatient Care, and would include operating rooms and radiation treatment rooms for cancer patients. A pedestrian bridge would connect the new building and the Yawkey Center. Hospital officials said they do not yet have an estimated cost; the Yawkey building cost $219 million to construct.

Massachusetts General plans to begin construction of the building, which would have three underground levels, next year and finish it in 2011, the 200th anniversary of the hospital's charter. David Hanitchak, director of planning and construction, said the emergency room entrance would be underground, replacing the crowded receiving area that is now adjacent to the hospital's front entrance at street level.

The new building, with 398,000 square feet of space, is larger than the hospital planned in an earlier proposal to the city, which called for a five-story building with 220,000 square feet.

The new 10-year plan eliminates a number of projects, including a steam power plant, a parking garage and transportation center on Nashua Street, and a building on Blossom Street, across from the Holiday Inn Select Boston hotel.

The Boston Redevelopment Authority is reviewing the hospital's plans and must grant approval before Mass. General can begin construction.

Hospital officials also intend to lease about 200,000 square feet of space in buildings they do not own in the area over the next decade.