Blame NHS bosses for mixed-sex wards

WHY, despite all the promises to tackle the issue, do patients still endure the indignity of mixed-sex wards? Although ministers pledged to get rid of them by 2010, latest figures show the number admitted to mixed-sex wards was at its worst for seven years during the winter crisis.

This is a classic example of the disconnect between public-facing people such as ministers, and those at the top of the NHS.

Faced with irate members of the public and media campaigns, of course politicians will promise to deal with the problem.

But the priority for those high up in the NHS is to reduce costs — and unlike government ministers, they’re not accountable to the public in the same way. Sitting in their offices, staring at their pie charts, it’s easy for them to become out of touch with what really matters to people.

For years, senior NHS managers have been pushing an agenda of closing hospital beds in favour of moving care into the community. While they claim it’s because people want to be cared for in their own homes, all they’re really interested in is money — and hospital beds are expensive.

The NHS has lost 15,000 beds in the past six years alone — that’s one in ten beds gone, despite demand and a rising population.

This policy is incompatible with the promise to stop mixed-sex wards. When hospitals operate a ‘one in, one out’ policy because they’re so full, allocating beds on the basis of gender is impossible.

The Mail has long campaigned against mixed-sex wards. Many, particularly the older generation and those who are bedbound, find them embarrassing.

I remember speaking to a patient who had not opened her bowels for over a week. She explained she couldn’t use the commode as the beds on either side were occupied by men.

‘The only man who has ever seen me naked is my husband,’ she told me apologetically. In fact, the hospital should have been apologising to her.

Research shows, too, that patients are at increased risk of violence on mixed wards — two-thirds of all attacks occur there.

It’s time the politicians made it clear to those NHS bosses that cutting beds isn’t the answer to the Health Service’s problems.