Consultants raise surgery fees

Hospital consultants are raising their fees for treating NHS patients in the Government's drive to cut waiting lists, it was revealed today.

Ministers want to double to 150,000 the number of NHS patients treated in private hospitals - but that is now likely to cost much more than the Government had expected.

NHS surgeons are being asked to treat patients in extra Saturday sessions or in private hospitals in order to meet the Government's target - that by April no one will have been waiting for treatment for longer than 15 months.

But consultants are raising their prices for carrying out the extra work, according to the NHS Confederation, which represents health authorities and trusts. Last year the two sides agreed on a price of about £600 for three and a half hours' NHS work on a Saturday morning. In the latest round of negotiations, the consultants are understood to be asking for at least £1,500.

Liberal Democrat health spokesman Evan Harris said it was wrong to pay people to work in the private sector when they could be working in the NHS.

But Dr Derek Machin, chairman of the British Medical Association's private practice committee, said: "Consultants feel they are already doing much more work than the NHS pays them for.

"So if trusts want them to do additional work, they are saying they want premium rates for it."

Nigel Edwards, of the NHS Confederation, said consultants had been working hard for a long time and were in "a seller's market".

? A senior civil servant at the Department of Health has urged employees to emulate actress Liz Hurley to gain good publicity for the health service.

"Liz Hurley knows exactly how to sell herself and the NHS should do the same. It is no longer enough to do a good job - they have to be seen to be doing a good job," Sian Jarvis, head of public relations, wrote in a magazine article.