SOUTH Durham Health Care NHS Trust is bidding for more than £100,000 of Government cash to create a specialised urgent chest pain service.

The clinic, which would cover both Darlington Memorial and Bishop Auckland General Hospitals, would aim to cut cardiac waiting times from 10-13 weeks to just three days.

It would build on the success of a 'one-stop' chest pain service based at Darlington, which offers rapid assessment on one day without unnecessary follow-up appointments.

The bid follows the Government's aim for hospitals to achieve a two week target time for chest pain assessment.

John Saxby, chief executive of the South Durham NHS Trust, said they were confident the outcome would be successful.

"Part of this is to try and stop people taking up hospital beds by reducing the number who are just waiting for tests," he said.

"The waiting time for query chest pains is longer than we would like it to be. We believe we can get that down to three days.

"We're hoping to hear by the end of this month whether we've been successful, but we are quite confident."

The trust hopes to appoint a second cardiologist next month to be one of two leading the urgent chest pain service.

They would be supported by a staff grade doctor who will help free-up consultant time for more assessments. There will also be a specialist cardiology nurse and technician support for the ecg and exercise testing.

The clinic will operate five days a week and alternate between the two hospitals at Darlington and Bishop Auckland.

The service will enable certain tests to be performed immediately such as ecgs, exercise testing, x-rays and pathology.

The new service will be welcome at Bishop Auckland General where the cardiology post has been vacant for more than two years.

If the bid is successful it is expected to be up and running by January 2001