BUREAUCRATS from the NHS Modernisation Agency have been descending on Basingstoke hospital to help with planning for the ground-breaking fast-track treatment centre to be built in its grounds.

The £7.5 million scheme - the first of its kind in the country - will see 20 short-stay beds and three operating theatres built to provide more operations involving stays of three days or less. These include eye operations and treatments in urology, ear, nose and throat, gynaecology and investigations for suspected cancer.

The hospital's director of nursing, Mary Edwards, said of the Modernisation Agency planners: "We are inventing this as we go, so they will be wanting to watch it fairly closely."

She added the agency staff would want to learn lessons from the Basingstoke experience so they could use them as more such centres are built across the country. They would be meeting with local staff to discuss the project every month.

Mrs Edwards said project managers would have to be appointed for the scheme as well as a lead doctor who would probably become the centre's director once it was built. He or she would also have to "sell" the new way of working to the other consultants.

She added no site for the centre had yet been decided but it will be linked to the main building on two floors.

Although the scheme will bring new beds to Basingstoke, the original plan also makes plain that 24 beds within the hospital will close before the end of the year to save money.