GOVERNMENT plans to set up private health treatment centres could undermine NHS hospitals, according to a leading North-East consultant.

Sunderland psychiatrist Dr Paul Miller, who chairs the British Medical Association's consultants committee, said the new Diagnostic and Treatment Centres (DTCs) "could seriously destabilise the finances of local NHS hospitals."

Two of the privately run DTCs are expected to be set up in Tyne and Wear.

However, some local doctors have said they could have performed the additional operations required if the existing NHS centres were better funded.

Dr Miller, who works at Sunderland Royal Hospital, said: "If you take the funding out for a few hundred operations, they will be the most straightforward operations and the NHS hospital will end up with more complex and therefore more costly patients while losing a pot of money to the DTCs."

His comments echoed those of eye specialists in Oxford, who have warned that the viability of their unit will be threatened by the number of operations that private contractors have been promised under the new scheme.

Dr Miller said he agreed with the principle of improving capacity to treat more NHS patients but expressed concern at the DTC solution offered by the Government.

He said: "There are concerns that doctors and nurses will be flown in from abroad with very little professional supervision, and very little thought has been given to teaching and training in these facilities."

Health minister Lord Warner said he had received a ''categorical assurance'' from the strategic health authority and primary care trusts in the area that it was not their intention to reduce the staff or budget of the Oxford Eye Hospital.

The new centre would be performing 13,500 extra operations in the Thames Valley area, he added