Private sector invited to run NHS surgery centres

Private sector companies have been invited to run the latest wave of new diagnostic treatment centres (DTC) to help cut waiting times for routine surgery.

Companies from Britain, the US and Europe have expressed an interest in running at least one DTC, which will offer routine surgery at convenient times for patients.

At a Downing Street seminar the Prime Minister told NHS representatives and heads of private sector companies that DTCs were part of wider-reaching plans to transform the way the NHS worked.

"We are anxious to ensure that this is the start of opening up the whole of the NHS supply system so that we end up with a situation where the state is the enabler, and regulator, but not always the provider,he said.

"The basic principles of the NHS would remain, but we would simply implement them in a different way for today world".

There are already 16 DTCs currently working in England, but only one is run by a private sector company, BUPA.

The first eight new DTCs, of a planned second wave of 30, are due to open in July with the rest expected to be up and running by the end of the year.

The Government hopes DTCs will help the NHS perform an additional 250,000 operations by 2005 in order to cut waiting times to a maximum of six months for non-urgent operations such as knee and hip replacements, and cataract removals.

Patients will be able to choose their own times for appointments and treatment and will stay in hospital just long enough to recover from their operation.