MEDWAY Maritime Hospital has been given a £6.5 million boost to help pay for staff wage increases and cut junior doctors' hours. The money for 2003/4 represents a 6.6 per cent increase.

The new budget for the year is £118.4 million. A total of £5 million of the extra money will pay for a 3.2 per cent pay award. It will also cover costs of fulfilling the European Working Time Directive on the number of hours worked by junior doctors and increased National Insurance contributions.

Most of the remaining investment in acute services will go on extra theatre sessions and the treatment of haematology patients locally. This will save bone marrow patients trips to Kings College Hospital in London for pre and post-operative treatment.

These funds will also allow the recruitment of an extra consultant urologist and team, who will play a key role in the treatment of cancer patients, and more resources for pharmacy services.

Overall inpatient/day case treatments are planned to increase by six per cent and outpatients by 10 per cent.

Across the whole health economy extra funds have been made available from primary care, mental health and acute services as a result of large increases in funds available to the NHS.

Medway NHS Trust chief executive Andy Horne said he welcomed the increase but efficiency savings still needed to be made.

He said: "There simply isn't going to be enough money in the system to achieve all the improvements required.

"Streamlining the way we work and working smarter to improve services in partnership with other parts of the health economy will remain at the forefront of all that we do."

By next March the hospital is committed to achieving a range of new targets including:

* Reducing the maximum wait for inpatient treatment from 12 to nine months.

* Reducing the maximum outpatient wait from 21 to 17 weeks.

* Seeing all suspected cancer patients within two weeks of referral by a GP, with treatment to start within 62 days.

* Admitting or discharging all A&E patients within four hours of arrival.

* Hospital cleanliness standards to be further enhanced.

* A balanced budget.