Health officials say they are working to reduce waiting times

New figures released by the hospital show that people from Shropshire are being treated within nine months.

But patients from Wales are more likely to be treated within 18 months.

Powys Local Health Board (PLHB) said it was working with the hospital to reduce waiting times.

In April 2003, the RSH said it was treating more patients from Wales, but warned that it was unlikely that Welsh trusts would pay enough to meet waiting time targets.

That prediction now appears to have come true, and follows a claim last week from a surgeon at another Shropshire hospital that he was not allowed to treat Welsh people unless they had been waiting 18 months.

That claim was denied by the Welsh Assembly Government and the hospital itself.

We're confident we're going to achieve further reductions Powys Local Health Board

Meanwhile, a spokeswoman for PLHB has said: "We are working with the RSH to drive down waiting times.

"We're confident we're going to achieve further reductions."

When asked why people in England were being treated sooner, the spokeswoman added that England had "different targets" to Wales.

The RSH's figures show that at the end of August no English patients were waiting more than nine months for routine surgery.

However, 22 mid Wales patients had been waiting between 12 and 18 months.

For the first appointment with a consultant, no English patients had been waiting more than 17 weeks, but 52 Welsh patients had been waiting more than a year.

The hospital said it was about to reach a new agreement with PLHB to reduce waiting times, but Welsh patients would still wait longer than those from England.

A spokeswoman for the Welsh Assembly Government said: "As the commissioning body, we'd expect the local health board to deal with the issue."

In 2003, the RSH treated more than 7,500 patients from Wales - 1,000 more than planned.

The RSH treats thousands of patients from Wales every year

Last week Plaid Cymru AM Ieaun Wyn Jones said he received a letter from a surgeon at the Robert Jones Agnes Hunt Orthopaedic Hospital at Gobowen, near Oswestry, after making inquiries for a constituent.

Orthopaedic surgeon Patrick Gregson said he could not operate on Elizabeth Moses from Menai Bridge any sooner because of the rule.

An assembly government spokeswoman said such a policy was "simply not true."