THE region's newest private hospital plans to increase bed numbers because of a rising demand from NHS patients.

The independent Woodlands Hospital, in Darlington, opened in July last year and has already proved its worth to the health service by treating hundreds of NHS patients who would otherwise have had to wait longer for surgery.

Faced with growing demands from the North-East NHS, the consortium of medical consultants who control the Morton Park hospital have decided to go for expansion.

Howard Rutherford, a former NHS orthopaedic surgeon who is now the £8.1m hospital's medical director, confirmed that it is set to grow.

"We are having to expand and put in more beds to fulfil the requests from the NHS being made right now," said Mr Rutherford.

The two-stage plan is to convert six of the existing day surgery beds into overnight beds and find space for another six overnight beds within the hospital.

"The NHS is probably our biggest growth area at present, although we are seeing also seeing a lot of privately-insured patients," said Mr Rutherford.

The prestige of the Darlington hospital received a major boost this week with the news that a deal has been struck to treat Dutch patients, who will be flown to Teesside from Amsterdam.

The deal followed a chance meeting at a conference in Holland between Mr Rutherford and Wim Krosenbrink, president of a Dutch health care company, Care for Care Fund.

Mr Rutherford said the arrangement was "open-ended" and from January Dutch patients, accompanied by a surgeon, a relative and an interpreter will fly in twice a month for treatment.

While the hospital already sees a lot of NHS patients, Mr Rutherford agrees with the Independent Healthcare Association that the private hospital sector should be more closely integrated with the NHS sector.

"Unfortunately, with the NHS is it often a last-minute rush. We are sometimes asked can you do 30 patients for us next week?" said Mr Rutherford.

More long-term planning would smooth out the "peaks and troughs" and be advantageous to both sides, he said.

Health Secretary Alan Milburn recently signed an agreement with the private health sector to allow a closer working relationship between the NHS and independent hospitals.

But the private sector believes it could treat 160,000 NHS patients a year - twice the present level.