Professor Stephen Powis said: ‘I think that we need to move in our hospitals much more to single rooms being the default for privacy and dignity, for infection control and actually for flow issues’
Patients should be given single rooms in hospitals by ‘default’ rather than put on wards to stop infections spreading, an NHS boss said today.
Professor Stephen Powis, NHS England and Improvement’s national medical director, said the rooms offer ‘privacy and dignity’.
Going forward, hospitals should be built around single rooms, he said.
As it stands, patients are automatically put into wards when they arrive at hospital.
But patients can pay between £100 and £350 a night to stay in a private room while receiving NHS care — such as after giving birth.
There are around 120,000 NHS hospital beds in England.
During the pandemic, hospitals were forced to cut bed capacity to ensure social distancing between patients.
Buildings also had to be divided into Covid and non-Covid areas in an attempt to reduce transmission to uninfected patients requiring hospital care.
There are around 120,000 NHS hospital beds in England. During the pandemic, hospitals were forced to cut their bed capacity to ensure social distancing between patients. Buildings also had to be divided into Covid and non-Covid areas in an attempt to reduce transmission to uninfected patients requiring hospital care
Speaking to MPs on the Health and Social Care Committee for tackling the Covid backlog, Professor Powis said: ‘Personally, I feel coming out of the pandemic one of the things we need to think really hard about is the number of single beds that we have.
‘I think that we need to move in our hospitals much more to single rooms being the default for privacy and dignity, for infection control and actually for flow issues.
‘That’s something we need to think hard about as we build the hospitals of the future.’
He also said extra bed capacity should be added to the NHS.
This would give the health service headroom during the winter when hospitals get busier and during future health crises.
The Department of Health announced in July that 40 new hospitals would be built in England by 2030 — but it is not clear whether these will be built around a private room model.
There are currently more than 7,000 patients in hospital with Covid across the UK and 921 were admitted with the virus today.
As the pandemic hit the UK last March, NHS England told trusts to discharge all hospital patients who were safely able to leave and postpone all non-urgent operations in an attempt to reduce transmission in hospitals and treat the influx of Covid-infected patients.
And hospitals were forced to work with less capacity during the pandemic to allow for physical distancing between beds.
The moves led to a backlog for routine hospital treatment, which hit another record high of 5.72million in August, according to the latest NHS England figures.
The UK Health Security Agency, which replaced the disbanded Public Health England, gave hospitals the green light last month to relax Covid-controlling restrictions.
Officials dropped guidance on social distancing, allowing for it to be cut to 1m in some low-risk areas of hospitals, which no longer need to be deep-cleaned between uninfected patients.
It comes as a report published by NHS Digital last week revealed it the would cost £9.2billion to complete upgrades to buildings that should already have been done.
The bill – which is 2.2 per cent higher than last year – includes maintaining 10,258 hospitals and other buildings, as well as ambulance services.
There are fears that several NHS hospitals made out of a lightweight concrete could be on the brink of collapsing.
Chancellor Rishi Sunak’s spending review, which is due to be released later next week, and will detail how much cash the NHS will get over the next three years.
The health service has already been promised a £30billion handout to clear the record-high waiting list for elective care that has amassed during the pandemic.
Professor Powis, who spoke to MPs with NHS England head Amanda Pritchard, also discussed the lack of face-to-face appointments in general practice, which has led some patients to attend A&E instead.
Data shows that 58 per cent of patients were seen face-to-face in August in England, compared to more than 80 per cent before the pandemic.
Health Secretary Sajid Javid set out plans to name and shame GP surgeries that do not see enough patients in person.
Professor Powis: ‘I think there is no doubt that there are some patients who are attending A&E still who would be better off being seen in another setting – that was the case pre-pandemic as well.
‘For exactly those reasons, the use of services such as 111, the use of digital online 111, is all designed to ensure that people don’t make a trip to the service when actually they could be dealt with quicker and more efficiently in another [area of the health] service.’
Ms Pritchard said the ‘vast, vast’ majority of GPs are working tirelessly and health chiefs have ‘tried to steer away from saying that there is a kind of a right number for face-to-face versus other types of access’.
She said some patients in-person appointments, but others find it ‘hugely convenient’ to see GPs remotely.