Malcolm Chisholm: "Clear focus"

Where this occurs, patients will be offered treatment elsewhere in the NHS or in the private sector.

The body, which has been created within the Scottish Executive's health department, is headed by the former chief executive of the Fife Acute Hospitals' Trust, John Connaghan.

The health department wants to reduce the maximum waiting time for operations from 12 to nine months and to six months for heart and cancer patients, by the end of this year.

Opposition parties have attacked Labour for failing to cut NHS waiting lists, which they say are now higher than when the government came to power.

However, the new unit's remit is to reduce waiting times and make sure that targets are met in the coming years.

Greatest need

Mr Chisholm said it would go much further than anything attempted in the past to tackle the long-standing problem of delays in the NHS.

"The unit will ensure the best use of our collective health resources and will target its work to provide the greatest benefit for those in the greatest need," he said.

"No area of treatment will be outside its remit, but it will keep a clear focus on our priority areas - cancer and heart disease.

The unit will provide us with an early warning system for delays in the NHS so that we can see where bottlenecks and pressures are arising

Health Minister Malcolm Chisholm

"Where an individual trust or board faces a particular bottleneck, whether in diagnosis, treatment or discharge, the unit will have the power to intervene and co-ordinate a solution to that problem - even if that solution means using spare capacity elsewhere in the health system."

The aim of the new unit will be to match patients in busy areas with spare capacity in other parts of the NHS.

If necessary it may also use private hospitals like the HCI in Clydebank.

It will start by targeting the executive's priority areas of cancer treatment and vital heart surgery, while also working to slash the longest delays faced by Scottish patients.

'Hit squad'

Mr Chisholm said the unit had been set up "to get a clear picture of waiting and delays in our health system in Scotland - but more importantly to mobilise every pound of investment and every scrap of resource to achieve the maximum benefit for patients".

"The unit will provide us with an early warning system for delays in the NHS so that we can see where bottlenecks and pressures are arising."

However, Scottish National Party health spokeswoman Nicola Sturgeon described the new unit as a "government hit squad" which would put further pressure on over-burdened NHS staff.

"The creation of such a unit will not address the fundamental problems of under-capacity and lack of staff in the NHS," she said.