DTCs will make an early impact on waiting times in some of the most pressured parts of the country

Alan Milburn, Health Secretary

At the Royal Haslar Hospital in Portsmouth, German medical staff will work alongside NHS doctors to carry out standard operations like hip replacements and cataract removal.

The Portsmouth project plus three more new schemes will enable the government to create the eight DTCs two years earlier than the planned 2004 deadline, said Health Secretary Alan Milburn.

The other new DTCs will be based at the Royal Berkshire and Battle Hospital in Reading, the Basingstoke Hospital, Hampshire and the Chase Community Hospital in Bordon, Hampshire.

In London, work has already started to create DTCs at University College Hospital, King's College Hospital and Moorfield's Eye Hospital.

Mr Milburn said: "The NHS is investing �15m to get this first wave of DTCs going.

"They will be receiving patients by the end of this year.

"DTCs will make an early impact on waiting times in some of the most pressured parts of the country.

"They will give us a range of innovative approaches to providing fast and convenient care, in partnership with different public and private organisations, in primary care and in hospitals.

"And where they go we intend that many more will follow.

Patients abroad

The reduction in waiting times we want to achieve will require a major expansion in this sort of innovative surgery centre."

Commenting on the government scheme, Shadow Health Secretary Dr Liam Fox said: "We recently suffered the national humiliation of sending patients abroad for treatment.

"Now the world's fourth largest economy is forced to say that we don't have enough of our own doctors to cope.

"How much more will the Government force us to endure?

"And why does it not make more effective use of our own surgeons since spare capacity already exists here?"

Liberal Democrat health spokesman Dr Evan Harris said: "The introduction of diagnostic and treatment centres are a sensible move.

"But this is nothing new as these projects have been planned for a long time.

"The new centre is good news for Portsmouth in particular, but it will not make up for the shattering of staff morale that occurs when the government labels a hospital as 'failing'.

"The government now has a responsibility to rebuild the morale of NHS staff as well as build new diagnostic centres."

Ministers are already committed to experiments sending NHS patients to Europe for treatment in hospitals with spare capacity.

A scheme is underway to send up to 200 patients from the south-east to Europe for surgery by the end of March.