Hospital letters typed in India

A cash-strapped hospital is sending its correspondence to be typed up in India as it cannot afford to hire experienced medical secretaries.

The University Hospital of North Staffordshire has just started a one-month trial of the scheme.

Letters are dictated digitally, sent to a unit in India, typed up and returned electronically within 24 hours.

The trust recently announced it was cutting 1,000 posts to reduce a deficit of £17m.

Fracture trial

A trust spokesman said it had been difficult to recruit medical secretaries and there had been an increase in patient numbers.

"Even if it were possible to recruit the right secretaries, the trust is not in a position to do so in its current financial climate," he said.

The scheme is being trialled in the fracture clinic.

The spokesman added that the service was used by 11 other NHS trusts in the country and had been checked carefully to make sure it is secure.

No patient-identifiable information is transferred, so patient confidentiality is not compromised, he said.

Last year, the hospital's trust chairman resigned over financial errors.

Calum Paton and four non-executive directors stood down in December after admitting two sets of auditors did not pick up on an overspend of £18m.