Mid Essex Hospital Services NHS Trust: Hospital Beds

To ask the Secretary of State for Health how many beds there were in the Mid Essex Hospital Services NHS Trust area in (a) May 1997 and (b) the latest date for which figures are available.

Ann Keen
Information is not available in the format requested. Information on beds data is collected annually via the KH03 return collecting the total available bed-days by trust. The following numbers are the calculated average daily bed number at the Mid Essex Hospital Services NHS Trust.

1997-98: 911 beds (open overnight and day only beds)

2007-08: 786 beds (open overnight and day only beds)

Mr. Burns
To ask the Secretary of State for Health (1) what proportion of beds in the Mid Essex Hospital Services NHS Trust area were in mixed sex wards in (a) 1997 and (b) the latest period for which figures are available;

(2) how many beds in the Mid Essex Hospital Services NHS Trust area were in mixed sex wards in (a) May 1997 and (b) the latest period for which figures are available.

Ann Keen
Information about the number/proportion of beds that are in mixed sex wards is not collected centrally. However, the Healthcare Commission’s annual national in-patient survey does provide data relating to mixed sex accommodation. For Mid Essex Hospital Services NHS Trust, the survey shows that in 20071, 36.8 per cent. of respondents reported sharing their sleeping area with a patient of the opposite sex upon first admission to the hospital.

Our guidance to the national health service has always required single sex accommodation rather than single sex wards. Even within a mixed ward, good single sex accommodation can be achieved by using single rooms or single sex bays and toilet facilities.

On 28 January 2009, the Department announced a six-month programme to eliminate mixed sex accommodation, this includes a £100 million ‘Privacy and Dignity Fund’ to support local improvements and tough financial penalties from 2010-11 for those trusts that do not deliver.

1 Source:

Healthcare Commission National Inpatient Survey, published May 2008.