Hospitals face fines for mixed-sex wards

Hospitals breaching the no mix-sex ward rules will be fined £250 per patient each day from April.

The new rules would have meant Pennine Acute Hospital Trust which runs the Royal Oldham, North Manchester, Rochdale Infirmary and Fairfield General, being fined almost £10,000 last month alone.

Health Secretary Andrew Lansley yesterday published figures showing 11,362 patients were placed in mixed-sex accommodation in hospitals last month, including 39 times by Pennine-run hospitals. A breakdown reveals three breaches were made at the Royal Oldham, one in Bury, five at Fairfield and 30 in North Manchester.

A spokesman for The Pennine Acute Hospitals NHS Trust said: “The majority of breaches occurred in critical care and medical admissions units and were the result of significant pressures in the whole hospital system caused by a combination of factors including the recent influenza outbreak.”

Hospitals are expected to provide separate sleeping, bathroom and toilet facilities for male and female patients.

Wards do not need to be single sex but patients should be kept in bays divided by at least a fixed full-height partition — not a curtain divider.