A DRIVE to save £40 million and hundreds of hours of doctors' and nurses' time by cutting NHS paperwork was announced today by Health Secretary Stephen Dorrell.

More than 10,000 adminstrators' jobs will be axed over two years as cash is redirected to patient care.

He pledged to abolish 175,000 forms a year by scrapping the requirement for NHS trusts to notify health authorities when a patient receives emergency or tertiary care outside existing contracts. Another £12 million will be saved by abolishing the requirement for trusts to seek prior approval before treating patients outside existing contracts.

Mr Dorrell also pledged to cut one million pieces of paperwork sent from the Department of Health and to make 11,000 fewer requests a year for information.

He announced a £45 million project to set up a NHS computer network that will enable much data to be transferred electronically, scrapping even more form filling.

Family doctors will be expected to fork out £5,000 for new computer equipment while a medium sized hospital trust or health authority will have to find £30,000 to link itself up to the new NHS network.

Mr Dorrell was speaking as he pledged to implement in full all the recommendations of a new efficiency scrutiny report on NHS adminstration "Seeing the Wood, Sparing the Trees" which looked at the work of 240 NHS Trusts and Health Authorities nationwide. ENDS

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