Fines to stamp out mixed-sex hospital wards

HOSPITALS face fines for putting patients on mixed-sex wards under a clampdown unveiled today.

Health chiefs will have the power to withhold payments to trusts which put male and female patients together in the same treatment unit.

The tough new penalties will be enforced from next year as part of a package of measures to eliminate mixed-sex accommodation. A £100 million fund is also being launched to help hospitals achieve the goal.

Trusts have also been issued with new guidance banning them from making men and women share sleeping accommodation or bathrooms.

Ministers have been forced to act after patients lodged more than 1,100 complaints. Health Secretary Alan Johnson pledged to abolish such accommodation within a year.

A survey published this month revealed that one in seven NHS trusts still had some type of mixed-sex ward.

A memo leaked to newspapers last week revealed the Government was "rattled" over its failure to scrap the practice.

The document quoted Mr Johnson as saying Labour had "got it wrong" over the practice, which the party had repeatedly promised to ban.

Today Mr Johnson told a conference in London the Government would no longer "foot the bill" for care delivered on mixed-sex wards and the new measures would ensure patients were treated with "dignity and privacy". He added: "People often feel at their most vulnerable when they are in hospital and being cared for in mixed-sex accommodation can be deeply distressing.

"These measures will help to ensure that patients can be treated with the dignity and privacy they rightly expect.

"The message is clear - the NHS has taken great strides in reducing mixed-sex accommodation over the last 12 years but now it must eliminate it altogether other than where clinically necessary. Hospitals who fail in their duty to protect patients' privacy will be financially penalised as we will not foot the bill for care that has taken place in mixed-sex accommodation."

Trusts now have until the end of next month to submit bids for funding to significantly reduce mixed-sex accommodation. The money will then be allocated in April and work is expected to start by the end of June.

A taskforce will also be sent into hospitals that need support to make changes over the next six months.