Foreign health firms to cure waiting lists

The Government today set out to woo foreign healthcare companies to set up fast-track surgery centres and cut NHS waiting-lists.

Alan Milburn is meeting healthcare and private hospital companies from Germany, France and Switzerland. At the same time, the Health Secretary is sending out a prospectus appealing to healthcare companies worldwide to move in.

While some will be invited to bring in teams of doctors and nurses to operate in existing NHS or private hospitals, others are expected to set up and run the special fast-track centres.

They would be available entirely for NHS patients with the hope that using staff from overseas would avoid the charge that the Government is simply shifting scarce resources and staff from one part of the service to another.

The move is the latest sign of the Government's increasingly urgent efforts to produce visible improvements to the health service ahead of the next election.

At the same time, however, ministers were warned that red tape is costing the country's GPs time which could offer almost three million extra appointments a year.

A Whitehall team studying doctors' workload says the time would be saved simply by allowing doctors to write one prescription for long-term medication, rather than regular repeats, with pharmacists given the responsibility for making the drugs available by instalments.

A further 2.4 million appointments a year could be "saved" in England if GPs were not obliged by businesses to see staff reporting sick until the seven day waiting period - permitted by law but often ignored - was observed.