PATIENTS in much of Merseyside and north Cheshire are still suffering the “indignity” of mixed-sex wards – nearly eight years after the Government pledged to scrap them.
At least three hospitals force men and women to share toilets and washing facilities, while others have beds separated only by curtains, partitions, or bays with one wall missing.
And mixed-sex accommodation is likely to be far more widespread, because three hospital trusts did not respond to research carried out by the Conservatives.
The Tories said the responses from the hospitals made a mockery of Health Secretary Alan Johnson’s claim last year that the Government was within “touching distance” of meeting its pledge.
Andrew Lansley, the party’s health spokesman, said: “Patients have enough to worry about when they go into hospital, without having to suffer the indignity of being placed in accommodation that affords them too little privacy at such a sensitive time.
“Despite hearing Labour ministers make promise after promise to end the scandal of mixed sex wards, we have not seen the necessary action, and they continue to blight our hospitals. It has been a list of promises made and broken.”
But no hospital in Merseyside and north Cheshire has “Nightingale-style wards” – with no divide between the beds – which still exist in around one in six hospitals across England.
Instead, the research reveals that the Royal Liverpool and Broadgreen trust has beds separated only by curtains, while other wards have semi-open bays which, the Tories alleged, might have to be passed to reach bathrooms.
At Southport and Ormskirk Hospitals trust, there are shared washing facilities and toilets, with mixed toilets at Aintree University Hospitals and at St Helens and Knowsley Hospitals.
Of the 10 trusts that replied to the Freedom of Information requests, only three – Clatterbridge Centre For Oncology, Mersey Care and the Walton Centre For Neurology and Neurosurgery – declared they had no mixed accommodation.
A Department of Health spokesman said the pledge was to reduce “mixed sex accommodation to an absolute minimum” – which allows shared wards to remain, provided the bays offered the proper privacy.
He added: “Some hospitals and NHS areas still have more to do and they are now required to publish and implement ambitious plans to improve.”
Last year, the Healthcare Commission reported that almost 3.2m patients were admitted to mixed-sex wards and described progress towards the Government’s pledge as patchy.
Ministers pointed to research showing patients were far more concerned about hospital cleanliness than single-sex accommodation.
Meanwhile, Mr Lansley said the Conservatives would double the number of single rooms in NHS hospitals at a cost of £1.57bn – money he insisted was available within the existing capital budget.
