by Eleanor Bradford BBC Scotland health correspondent

Facilities at the centre in Poland are said to be "world-class"

Scottish patients waiting for NHS hip operations could be offered the chance of surgery in Poland, BBC Scotland has learned.

A Polish medical company said it has had discussions with the Scottish Executive's National Waiting Times Unit, which was set up to cut NHS waiting times.

However, the Scottish Executive said it "has not taken up any offers" of using services abroad and has been boosting its capacity at home.

The company, Polmedica, is offering up to 1,000 operations per year at the new Polanica Zdroj hospital in the spa resort of Polanica, in south western Poland.

It currently offers orthopaedic operations, but cardiac surgery will be available next year.

Piotr Ney, marketing director of Polmedica, said the company had received "quite a lot of interest so far".

"We can provide world-class facilities here at a substantial saving to the NHS in terms of costs and resources," he said.

"We can also process quite a lot of patients per year thus freeing up waiting lists [in the UK]."

Treatments will be cheaper here than they are in Britain Edward Kaminski Have Your Say: Operations abroad

The cost of performing the operations in Poland is substantially less than doing them within NHS Scotland.

Despite the fact patients would be treated by highly-skilled English-speaking surgeons, the cost - including flights - could be as little as half that of the NHS.

Patients would be flown out to Poland and spend 14 days in hospital before returning home.

Edward Kaminski, director of the Polanica Zdroj Hospital, said he expected to treat British patients by November.

He added: "Without a doubt treatments will be cheaper here than they are in Germany or Britain.

"We are sure that we can negotiate a package that is both of benefit to this facility and the NHS."

Patients would be treated on dedicated English-speaking wards, with one-to-one nursing care in intensive care.

'Several approaches'

The hospital also makes use of the town's spa waters for specially built pools and baths to help orthopaedic patients recover from their operations.

A spokeswoman for the executive said: "The national waiting times unit has had several approaches from organisations which provide health care abroad.

"But we have not taken up any offers because it has not been appropriate, and we have expanded capacity in Scotland."

The spokeswoman said the option of operations overseas remained open, although such cases were be "extremely rare".

A spokesman added: "There are no discussions between the national waiting times unit - or the national waiting times centre - with any company for Scots patients to be treated in Poland."

The Scottish National Party opposed any plan to treat patients abroad.

Health spokeswoman Shona Robison said: "It is vital that waiting lists and waiting times are reduced but it is ironic that in order to do so people have to go to Poland.

Patients can wait for months for treatment in Scotland

"The Scottish Executive must find a long term solution to the problems in the NHS and the only way to do this is to tackle existing staff shortages by attracting more people into the profession."

The Scottish Conservatives have described the situation as "a sad indictment on the state of our health service".

Health spokesman David Davidson MSP said: "It seems the situation has become so bad that the Scottish Government needs to send patients abroad.

"The simple fact is that this government is in a total mess on health."

Last year the Scottish Executive bought the former private HCI hospital in Clydebank at a cost of more than �37m in an attempt to cut waiting lists.

Waiting times for hip and heart operations have fallen since then but, by May 2003, 600 patients had still waited longer than nine months.

The government has pledged that no-one will wait longer than nine months for operations by the end of 2003.

Cardiac patients have also been given a guarantee that they will be treated within this time frame.

As a result, most of the spare capacity in the private sector has been booked by the government.