STAFF across the county's hospitals have been praised for helping to deliver the fastest ever access to treatment for patients.

Worcestershire Acute Hospitals NHS Trust - which runs the Worcestershire Royal, the Alexandra in Redditch and Kidderminster Hospital - was set targets of reducing the maximum waiting times for an operation to six months and the maximum waiting time for a first outpatient appointment to 13 weeks. Both targets have been hit.

John Rostill, chief executive of the trust, said: "This is undoubtedly good news for our patients, who are now getting the treatment they need more quickly.

"Many of the thousands of people we treat every year will wait much less than the maximum time."

But he added that having hit the targets, staff could not afford to become complacent. We must work hard to keep waiting times down, because in just two years' time the target will be a maximum of 18 weeks from a patient being referred to us by their GP to them starting their hospital treatment," he added.

"We want to get ahead of the game and continue to drive waiting times down.

"There is now a real choice and we anticipate that patients will begin to exercise this and no doubt waiting times will be one of the criteria used."

Two years ago the inpatient waiting time target was a year and the outpatient target was 21 weeks.

In March 2003, nearly a quarter of patients on the inpatient waiting list were waiting more than six months and more than 1600 were waiting longer than 13 weeks for an initial outpatient appointment.

Mr Rostill added: "Compare that with today's figures where nearly 50 per cent of patients wait less than six weeks for outpatients and nearly 60 per cent of inpatient or day cases are seen within three months."