WORCESTERSHIRE heart patients who have been waiting six months for an operation will be treated in another public or private hospital - or even another country.

As of yesterday, victims of long cardiac waiting lists can ask for the NHS to pay for the surgery to be performed in a different hospital at home or abroad.

The scheme - already tried out in London and the south-east - is the latest Government attempt to bring down waiting times for the most serious operations.

Ministers recognise they need private and foreign hospitals to hit their target of ensuring no one waits more than six months for treatment by 2004.

But the scheme has been criticised because it involves diverting NHS money to profit-making health firms.

NHS hospitals have already started writing to the first 2,500 patients who have been waiting for more than six months to invite them to join the scheme.

They have been offered a meeting with an independent patient care adviser.

A further 800 to 1000 patients will become eligible each month.

Patients who choose to wait for treatment at their local hospital will be given a guarantee that they will not wait more than 12 months.

Health Secretary Alan Milburn said patients currently faced a terrible dilemma of having to "wait for treatment or pay for treatment".

"This is an important first step in giving patients more choice in the NHS," he said.

Mr Milburn said no one was now waiting more than 12 months for a heart operation, compared to more than 1,000 people two years ago.

A board of independent Patient Choice Trustees, headed by the British Heart Foundation, has been set up to oversee the scheme.