I asked my doctor relative about this once and IIRC they basically said because hospitals are not hotels - if you're inpatient in America you're pretty sick and more than likely need periodic monitoring for your condition. As soon as you're well enough to be sleeping for long periods of time without observation you'll get bounced.
The article's premise was that you can maintain the current quality of monitoring while increasing sleep quality with simple changes, and that increasing sleep quality will improve the patient's recovery.
You can be a patient and be so sick of the noise that you decide you want to opt out of the monitoring - or you DIY anyway, as most hospital do not take requests kindly.
I was once in ICU. The cardiac monitor was beeping loudly whenever I was starting to sleep.
After the first few time woke me up in pain, I bent over and pushed the button to power off the cardiac monitor. Problem solved! I fully admitted all the risks - but there comes a time when too much is just too much.
I did that with my IV machine the one time I was in the hospital. It would start incessantly beeping when the fluids needed changing, so I learned how to silence the alarm (by watching the nurses do it the first time). When the alarm went off, I'd call the nurse and then silence the machine.
When it went off at 3am I did that and by the time the nurse came by I was already asleep. She saw what I did and got angry at me. Re-awakened me responded badly to that and words were exchanged. She didn't bother me for the rest of the night at least (and we made up in the morning, when I was awake enough to be rational).
