HEALTH bosses will be fined because they cannot make all parts of a Worcester hospital single sex without getting rid of beds for vulnerable patients.

Chiefs at Worcestershire Royal Hospital were told by the Government at the end of last year that key areas of the hospital such as A&E and medical assessment units (MAUs) must become single sex by Friday, April 1, or they would face fines.

But doing the work would lead to the loss of six emergency beds at one of the busiest times of year for staff.

However, health bosses at Worcestershire Acute Hospitals NHS Trust said that while this work had been finished at the Alexandra Hospital in Redditch the work had not yet finished in parts of Worcestershire Royal Hospital in Worcester.

The trust has already invested £290,000 on making parts of the hospitals compatible with new rules, including the medical assessment ward bays at the Royal and the endoscopy and day case units at the medical day case unit, also at the Royal.

Helen Blanchard, director of nursing and midwifery, said: “We would further compromise patient care if we proceeded with these additional alterations because it would mean a loss of six beds at Worcester.”

At a board meeting at the Alexandra Hospital in Redditch bosses agreed to defer work at the Worcester site because of the risk to patients of losing the beds which can be used for patients with acute medical needs such as severe pneumonia.

A breach of the rules happens when a patient of one sex has contact with a patient of another sex, for example, if a male patient has to walk past the bed of a female patient or if they have to use the same toilet.

The rules still allow for visitors of either sex to enter any ward and the breaches only apply to patients themselves.

At Worcester most of the Medical Assessment Unit is compliant but the trolley area where patients are assessed and the A&E observation do not meet the standard.

However, the acute trust will not be fined the full cost of care of every patient who experiences a breach and at the moment NHS Worcestershire will only fine the acute trust 10 per cent of the tariff for treating each patient, the minimum possible fine.

Mrs Blanchard was not able to confirm how much this fine would be as the tariff depends on the nature of the medical problem each patient has.

In December, the month before much of the building work to make other parts of the hospital compatible, there were 1,379 breaches.

• Your Worcester News was the only member of the media to attend the meeting.