By Marjory Inglis, health reporter

A PRIVATE company is to start work at Ninewells Hospital, Dundee, that will see it carrying out investigations crucial in the diagnosis of cancer as well as other more routine illnesses.

The news came on the day that Scottish Health Secretary Nicola Sturgeon praised all Scottish health boards, including Tayside, for meeting national waiting time targets.

It emerged at a meeting in Ashludie Hospital by Monifieth yesterday that there is an increasing demand for endoscopy that could compromise waiting times.

The procedure is carried out by passing a camera on the end of a flexible tube through bodily orifices so specialists can look at what is going on inside a patient’s body.

At yesterday’s meeting of NHS Tayside’s delivery unit committee, the organisation’s chief operating officer Gerry Marr said the arrival of private company Vanguard was imminent.

He said there were “challenges” in endoscopy and there was a group of clinical experts being brought together to try to understand whether the rising demand for endoscopy was a trend or the result of some “phenomenon.”

“If it is a trend, then it is extremely concerning for how we build up our capacity,” said Mr Marr.

Further building capacity in the NHS usually means taking on extra staff and funding more clinics on a permanent basis to cope with ongoing demand. Health authorities also fund short-term initiatives to cope with immediate problems.

“In terms of the short-term, we are in discussion again with our colleagues from Vanguard who have at various times come on site to provide orthopaedic surgery and endoscopy,” said Mr Marr.

“We are looking to be bringing them on site imminently to undertake a number of weeks’ work in endoscopy in particular, otherwise our waiting time targets will be seriously compromised.”

In the past Vanguard has provided a mobile operating theatre that was located adjacent to the hospital’s renal unit and connected to the main building with a temporary tunnel that left patients unaware they were effectively moving outside when they were taken to the mobile theatre.

Earlier in the meeting, the delivery unit’s medical director Professor Stewart Forsyth reported that the unit was making good progress and meeting all the key national waiting times targets at present.

His report also contained information about services such as physiotherapy and child and adolescent psychiatry which had no national targets.

Nevertheless, NHS Tayside is trying to make progress on areas with no national targets and recently employed an additional consultant in child and adolescent psychiatry to help bring down waiting times for these services.

“It is anticipated changes will reduce the current long-standing waiting list problems in these services,” said Professor Forsyth.

In response to Ms Sturgeon’s favourable report on the national targets, Mr Marr pointed to the hard work of staff.

“This has been a tremendous effort by staff across Tayside, mostly to do with the way they are willing to think innovatively, change the way they deliver services and improve access,” said Mr Marr.

Many clinics and other health services are being provided in more local settings and moving out from the major acute hospitals and there is a move to widen this way of working to make sure patients can get services as close as possible to their own homes.

“Nicola Sturgeon is speaking about formal government targets,” said Mr Marr.

“We are taking on the challenge of community waiting times, which are not formal government targets, and we are recognising they deserve the same attention and although things like physiotherapy and child psychiatry are not part of the formal government targets, we are just as determined to improve these waiting times as we are others.”