TREATMENTS for almost 2,000 extra patients in Gwent, costing £6 million, are proposed by health chiefs to meet the maximum 12-month waiting time target by the end of next March.

More than half of these patients will be offered the opportunity either of travelling to another NHS hospital, most likely in England, for their operation, or of treatment in a private hospital, paid for by the NHS.

But Gwent Healthcare Trust bosses want to treat as many extra cases as possible in Gwent hospitals. They are proposing projects to temporarily boost capacity at the Royal Gwent and Nevill Hall Hospitals, and hope to persuade the Assembly to fund these through the Second Offer Scheme.

Set up earlier this year to pay for extra treatments to ensure no patient in Wales waited more than 18 months for an operation, the scheme was extended in the summer when Assembly health minister Jane Hutt announced that the maximum treatment waiting time was being reduced to a year.

Since then, Welsh NHS trusts have been working out how many more patients must be treated during 2004/05 to meet the new target, and how much it will cost.

In Gwent, 1,961 more treatments than planned this year are required, at an extra cost of £6,033,000.

More than 800 are orthopaedic treatments, costing nearly £4m. All bar a few dozen of these must be done outside Gwent, or in a private hospital, as will two-thirds of the proposed 360 extra ear-nose and throat (ENT) treatments.

But several hundreds of extra general surgery, urology and gynaecology treatments will be provided in Gwent hospitals if funding is agreed for more operating sessions, for instance at weekends.

Trust bosses want to minimise what is known as the outsourcing of treatments, to ensure continuity of care and reduce the impact of pressures on waiting times next year, as a result of patients turning down Second Offer Scheme opportunities at other hospitals.

Plans also recognise the fact that some patients must be treated in Gwent as their particular problems rule out transfer.