Transgender people will be treated in private rooms in UK hospitals under new government plans to amend the NHS constitution.
The proposal builds on a pledge last year by then Health Secretary Steve Barclay to ensure that people who have changed their gender identity are no longer treated in men’s or women’s wards.
This plan is NHS constitutionThis sets out the rights patients have in relation to the care they receive from the NHS.
Hospital bosses responded by accusing ministers of dragging the NHS into a “pre-election culture war debate” and ignoring more pressing issues, such as long waiting times for treatment.
The proposal also includes a reaffirmation of existing rights for homosexual patients, requiring them to receive only “intimate care” such as breast, genital and rectal examinations from same-sex hospital staff. Ward.
The Department of Health and Social Care (DHSC) said its aim was to increase privacy, dignity and safety for all patients, including transgender people.
But Matthew Taylor, chief executive of the NHS Confederation, which represents hospital trusts, told ministers it was important that “the NHS is not drawn into a pre-election culture war debate”.
The debate over constitutional amendments “is not about grabbing headlines,” he added.
Ministers have detailed plans to improve funding for the NHS, tackle the aging of many health facilities and return waiting times for A&E care and scheduled surgeries to levels seen when the constitution was first promulgated in 2012. He said it would be better to bring this forward.
Dr Emma Runswick, vice chair of the Council of British Medical Associations, also criticized plans for how the NHS should manage transgender hospital patients.
“Some of the proposed changes to the NHS constitution risk doing more harm than good and could encourage further discrimination, harassment and exclusion of already marginalized groups,” she said.
“If these proposed changes come into force, transgender and non-binary patients could have limited access to vital NHS services.”
Taylor said the proposed new guidance is vague. It does not explicitly instruct hospitals to routinely place transgender people in private rooms. But this seems to be expected to happen in general.
The report says hospitals should consider the needs of all patients on the ward when considering how to apply long-established single-sex ward policies to transsexual people. .
It also highlights “concerns that patients have about sharing hospital accommodation with patients of the opposite sex”.
“When making these decisions, it is important to balance the impact on all service users and demonstrate that there are good reasons to restrict or change access for transgender people.” the report states.
Giving transgender people a private room would be justified under the Equality Act 2010. Because it “permits the provision of homosexual or other sexual services, provided certain conditions are met.”
Maria Caulfield, minister for women’s health strategy, said the government wants the NHS to respond to same-sex requests for intimate care and maintain single-sex wards.
But Shadow Health Secretary Wes Streeting stressed that NHS figures “show that the use of mixed-sex wards has exploded under the Conservatives”. Last year, women had to spend the night on hospital wards alongside male patients 44,000 times, 20 times more than a decade ago, putting the safety of vast numbers of people at risk. has been done. ”
