Building privacy into hospital designs

With clients involved in clinical research, I often have to go to meetings at research centres in the local hospitals. One thing that I find off-putting is that the hallways are all common, so that I often pass patients who are being wheeled from one procedure to another. People are pretty vulnerable at times like that and are certainly not at their best. Even though I have a reason to be there, it feels like I'm intruding when I walk down the hall. Apparently a hospital in Maine is sensitive to this and has designed its new facility to take this into account. The new Mercy hospital will have separate hallways for transporting patients and the administration is advertising this feature. See: RedOrbit - Health - Mercy's Plan Will Allow Parking, Privacy and Efficiency in Services.