HEALTH chiefs have defended plans to send 45,000 patients to a private firm for operations using £23million of NHS cash.

Bosses from Blackburn with Darwen Primary Care Trust told councillors last night that the move was essential to hit a key waiting time target.

They spoke after The Lancashire Telegraph yesterday revealed a letter from East Lancashire's four most senior hospital consultants to the area's GPs which said taking operations elsewhere would see NHS services fall apart.

An estimated 45,000 patients are to be sent to facilities run by South African firm Netcare in Blackburn and Burnley for assessment, diagnostic tests such as scans and minor procedures. The operations will remain free for patients.

The PCT decides what organisations should treat patients in the borough.

Its director of commissioning, Janet Ledward, told members of Blackburn with Darwen Council last night that at the moment patients were waiting up to 51 weeks to have a test to determine what treatment they needed.

She said Netcare was needed to bring this down to hit a key Government target, to get all NHS patients treated within 18 weeks by the end of 2008.

Speaking to the council's health and social care overview and scrutiny committee Mrs Ledward said: "It radically cuts down the amount of time patients have to wait for services but it also gives you some continuity of care."

The present wait was affecting patients' condition, she said before continuing: "There is a whole raft of patients in the middle who have decided against going to hospital or who don't need it and it is those patients we are wanting to use the new service."

She said hospitals would be "freed up" under the £23 million plans, meaning doctors could focus on more complex conditions.

But she said the PCT was expecting some "very difficult" discussions with hospital doctors. While the four consultants have welcomed the extra work in general surgery and orthopaedics, they said their teams could hit 18 weeks in urology, gynaecology and ear, nose and throat departments and these must not go to Netcare. To do so would make the NHS services "unsustainable".

Public meetings on the plans begin at Clitheroe Health Centre, Railway View Avenue, on Thursday from 7pm to 9pm.