Hospitals with fireplaces and pianos?

This is not such a crazy idea according to the NYT article, What Healthcare Should Look Like. Imagine, a hospital with community rooms offering relaxing piano music, fireplaces that invite warmth (and not the coldness/antiseptic feeling usually associated with hospitals). Imagine being able to pass the time with some community activities offered by the hospital. Contrary to popular belief, not every patient admitted into the hospitals is contagious (for example, those admitted for chemotherapy treatments are not contagious) and they too want to keep their minds off their conditions. Nobody likes hospitals--- it is too soulless. There is no life (and the hospital is the last place you want to associate as having “no life”).

What if architects could come into each hospital and completely redo them—make them friendlier, comforting, caring, less scary --- and even have a soul? What if you can spend your visiting hours with loved ones on a couch playing a game of chess? What if there were courtyards available to the patients/caregivers (so that during visiting hours they aren’t confined to 4 white, antiseptic walls in a room separated from the next patient a few feet away by just a curtain?)

What if...?