Hospitals will be fined £250 per patient per day for breaking rules on mixed-sex accommodation after more than 11,000 breaches in just one month, the government has said.

Health secretary Andrew Lansley put a figure on the amount trusts will be forced to pay after data showed 11,362 patients were put in mixed-sex accommodation in December.

Mr Lansley said the breaches were “unacceptable”, but accused Labour of covering up previous data on mixed-sex accommodation.

Labour said the Conservatives had dropped their promise to build 45,000 new single rooms for the NHS.

Mr Lansley said: “Labour ministers said mixed-sex accommodation was eliminated but they never published the information to prove it.

“For the first time, we have released that information. It exposes the scale of the problem, which is far worse than we were led to believe.

“Publishing these figures in itself revolutionises accountability to patients but that’s just the start.”

Single-sex accommodation refers to patients of the same sex sharing sleeping, bathroom and toilet facilities, either in single rooms or single-sex wards.

If men and women share a ward, then they must have separate bays or rooms.

Intensive care units and A&E are exempt from the policy.

Nigel Edwards, outgoing chief executive of the NHS confederation, said: “NHS organisations have made significant progress in reducing the numbers of patients staying on mixed-sex wards in recent years, but this data shows that some still haven’t cracked the problem completely.

“Many of the NHS organisations that have not eliminated all of their mixed-sex accommodation have real practical issues - many are in old buildings and they will need substantial reinvestment to address the issue.

“We need to understand why it is so difficult for them to stamp out the problem.”

The data covers almost all health organisations across England that provide inpatient care and is drawn from an estimated 1.4 million courses of completed treatment.

Some 52% of hospitals that submitted data said there had been no breaches, but 92% of all breaches occurred in acute hospital trusts.

The region with the highest occurrence of rule-breaking was the North West. The lowest was in Yorkshire and the Humber.

Overall, 269 organisations submitted data, including all 75 acute non-foundation trusts, 72 out of 92 acute foundation trusts and 39 out of 53 mental health providers.

 

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