Tuesday 5 May 2009

Projects will end mixed sex wards

More than 700 projects are planned across 200 health trusts in England as part of a drive to eliminate mixed sex accommodation in hospitals, Health Secretary Alan Johnson has announced.

Building work has started to create new bathrooms, partition walls and other measures to provide male and female patients with separate toilets and sleeping areas.

In January, the Government pledged to stop paying hospitals for the care of patients in mixed-sex wards unless it could be clinically justified. Mr Johnson said that from 2010/11 hospitals which failed to protect patients' privacy would be penalised financially.

The Department of Health revealed that some improvement works started in April after a £100 million "privacy and dignity fund" was allocated to all Strategic Health Authorities in England.
A few thoughts:

1. Twelve years on, and they still haven't sorted this out?

2. If they "penalise hospitals financially", who ends up paying? And why don't they say "fine"?

3. £100 million is about 0.1% of the annual NHS budget.

Source: The Metro.

1 comment:

Witterings from Witney said...

Yet another 'recycled' policy to cover an original policy that has been not been implemented!

As you say 12 years on and they still haven't sorted it out - like everything else they try to do. Education, Crime, Health, Law & Order etc etc etc.