PATIENTS in Worcestershire will soon be able to have operations in supermarket car parks.

The world's largest mobile medical fleet will be parked up at sites across the county.

And by next June, nine mobile units operated by the private Nuffield Hospitals group - including operating theatres, endoscopy units, recovery wards and outpatient units - will be deployed on easily accessible sites in the community such as leisure centres and supermarkets.

The Department of Health initiative aims to make procedures like tonsillecto my, endoscopy, haemorrhoid surgery and adult circumcision more easily accessible for patients who live further away from hospitals.

The national fleet - The world's largest mobile medical fleet and the only one of its kind - has already been used by the NHS to carry out more than 60,000 safe and successful procedures. Under the contract with West Midlands Strategic Health Authority, which oversees health provision in the region, Nuffield Hospitals will carry out 24,000 additional outpatient appointments a year across Worcester-shire, Herefordshire and Warwickshire for the next five years, with 10,000 a year of these likely to result in day case procedures. Nuffield Hospitals' medical and clinical staff will have the capacity to undertake most forms of general surgery and clinical specialty.

Nuffield Hospitals' chief executive David Mobbs said: "As an organisation Nuffield Hospitals is delighted to have secured preferred bidder status for this mobile healthcare solutions contract and very much looks forward to supporting the NHS in the West Midlands to meet its 18-week patient waiting list target.

"Nuffield treats the first patients under this contact in June 2007 and we are proud that the West Midlands SHA chose us ahead of other independent healthcare groups.

"This is the largest fleet of sophisticated mobile healthcare units ever deployed in the UK and it confirms our belief that we are in a position to offer the most flexible and forward-thinking mobile healthcare solutions to the population of the West Midlands."

The units are likely to remain at each site - which have not yet been confirmed - for up to three weeks. Patients requiring treatment will still take the same route through the system, via their doctors, as if they were having their operation at a hospital.

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