Five-week wait for ops pledged

by BEEZY MARSH, Daily Mail

Patients will have to wait only five weeks for surgery by the end of the decade, Health Secretary John Reid has pledged.

Ministers are so confident of slashing waiting times that they believe waits of just over a month for operations are on the cards within four years.

A target to halve the maximum waiting time for surgery to nine months by the end of March has been met, says the Government, and that figure will be halved again by 2008.

Dr Reid said: "By 2008 the maximum waiting time in this country will be about three or four months and the average waiting time for an operation will be five weeks.

"That is the sort of health service we should have had in this country for 50 years and we are going to deliver it."

Private sector help

The continuing success of waiting time targets will rely on private sector help.

But Whitehall sources indicate that British firms are increasingly being frozen out in favour of foreign providers.

Foreign firms have already trounced the UK private sector for contracts to provide "fast-track" treatment centres for cataract and hip operations through undercutting.

A source said: "We went to the British firms and they could not provide the quality we needed at the price we wanted."

The private sector is set to feel the pinch further as NHS trusts are discouraged from "spot purchasing" extra operations, in favour of new contracts with foreign firms.

Dr Reid is expected to announce this week that private firms are needed to provide at least 12 MRI scanners to speed up treatment.

A shortage of scanners and specialist staff means some patients have to wait months for diagnostic tests - delaying operations and treatment.

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