§ Mr. Dobson:To ask the Secretary of State for Health what assumptions were made by his Department about the costs of operations in NHS diagnostic and treatment centres relative to the costs of the same operations carried out at existing NHS hospitals in the same part of the country. [130648]
§ Mr. Hutton[holding answer 16 September 2003]: When the new national tariff for the national health service is fully implemented, the price paid by a primary care trust for treatment at a NHS treatment centre will be the same as that paid in any other NHS trust facility, i.e. the national tariff, adjusted by the market forces 59W factor. We expect NHS treatment centres to deliver both high quality services and high standards of productivity and efficiency and therefore we have assumed that their operating costs will be within the national tariff.