The NY Times reports that Harvard and Yale Hospitals have figured out that hospitalized people enjoy sleeping through the night rather than being woken up every couple of hours to be poked and probed! While it is amazing that it took these great hospitals 100 years to figure this out, note that competition played a key role here in fostering this learning.
A major theme in my life's work is the importance of non-market "quality of life" factors in our overall standard of living. Yes, income is not a sufficient statistic for your well being but how do you go beyond the "Great Man" studies of Stiglitz and Sen (see their French Report) and actually make progress on this squishy idea? The Ivy League hospitals are surveying their hospitalized guests (on a scale of 1 to 9 are you enjoying how I take your blood?) but this is cheap talk.
In my own work (that builds on Sherwin Rosen's work), I have investigated how much people pay for non-market goods as this reveals their priorities for what they want in terms of their city's attributes. Unfortunately, when you are lying in a hospital bed there are no markets that allow you to "vote with your feet" and express your priorities. Since the hospital you are lying at has a monopoly at that time, it had little incentive to cater to the patient's short term emotional needs. Increasing competition leads to "nicer suppliers".
For some examples of my quality of life work; read my 1st Handbook Chapter or my first China paper.https://ideas.repec.org/a/eee/juecon/v63y2008i2p743-757.html