Tony Blair promised a better service for patients

Prime Minister Tony Blair outlined broad details of the scheme at a visit to a hospital in London.

He also announced the creation of 1,000 extra training places for nurses next year as well as a 30% increase in midwifery training places and more training places for GPs.

Mr Blair said: "We can make changes and make them work for the benefit of patients."

Health Secretary Alan Milburn will later give more detail of the plans.

Split approach

One cannot be completely fixated simply on providing surgical facilities when there may not be the staff available to run them

British Medical Association

Health professionals believe that the traditional approach, under which urgent and non-urgent patients are treated in the same facilities, results in unnecessary delays for non-urgent cases.

During the winter months, many hospitals have to cease all non-urgent work in order to deal with an influx of emergency cases.

The new units are also expected to work over weekends, and early in the morning and the evening, in an attempt to offer greater convenience to working patients.

The facilities, which could be open in four to five years, could eventually take over up to 80% of all non-urgent work within the health service.

They could be financed either directly from the public purse, or through the Private Finance Initiative.

A spokesperson for the British Medical Association expressed doubt about the plans. She said UK surgeons were already working an average of 50-60 hours a week, and that there was simply no slack in the system.

She told BBC News Online: "There must be serious doubts about whether these new centres can be adequately staffed.

"There is a desperate shortage of staff in the NHS, from nurses, to surgeons, radiologists and pathologists.

Desperate shortage

"One cannot be completely fixated simply on providing surgical facilities when there may not be the staff available to run them."

Mr Derek Machin, a consultant urologist and deputy chairman of the BMA's consultants committee, said: "We need to be aware that not all patients can be dealt with as day cases, or in a one or two day stay.

"The fact is that there is still a requirement for a large number of in-patient surgical beds."

Mr Machin said many people admitted to hospital had illnesses other than that for which they were being treated.

"Those people do need continuing specialist care in hospital."

He said there was also a risk that the new beds would be used to treat emergency patients at times of high demand.

Stunt

Shadow Health Secretary Dr Liam Fox said the plans were being rushed out without being properly thought through.

He said: "The worry is that this is yet another stunt.

"We have grown use to government trying to grab headlines. We want to make sure that it is the patients being put first here, not the politicians."

Nick Harvey, for the Liberal Democrats, said: "This announcement of new hospitals would be more useful had Labour not waited three years to invest in more staff.

"As it is, two years of sticking to Tory spending plans has left the NHS overstretched and under pressure."