NHS may send blood tests to India

NHS blood tests could be shipped out to laboratories in India under radical cost-cutting plans.

Ministers have already met representatives from a clinical testing firm based in Bombay which is lobbying for the pathology work.

Under the extraordinary proposal, patient samples would be flown out to India for testing, and the results emailed back to UK hospitals. The firm has already persuaded some private hospitals in Britain to try out the plan. But any move to ship blood tests to laboratories overseas will be highly controversial - raising fears that vital samples could be lost or mixed up.

The Department of Health does not set any waiting time targets for blood tests. Millions of patients are forced to wait weeks for the results of even the simplest procedures.

Bombay-based SRL Ranbaxy has told the Government it could reduce the ?2billion-ayear-bill for blood and urine testing by as much as a third.

SRL Ranbaxy told ministers that up to 40 per cent of pathology testing has the potential to be outsourced to India. It is understood that the firm's chairman, Harpal Singh, has held talks with the Department of Health and has met Trade and Industry Secretary Patricia Hewitt.

A spokesman for the Department of Health said: "We are exploring a number of options for the involvement of the independent sector in diagnostics."