John Reid, the health secretary, will today give his seal of approval to plans for the NHS to import methods used by private healthcare corporations in the US to reduce patients' stays in hospital by as much as two-thirds.
He will tell an international gathering of health ministers in Washington that he is conducting previously unannounced experiments in eight areas of England, using techniques developed in the US by Kaiser Permanente.
Kaiser, a not-for-profit corporation based in California, is the biggest private health insurer in the world. Its patients spend about a third of the time in hospital that NHS patients spend for such problems as asthma, bronchitis and strokes among people over 65.
Mr Reid's speech to health ministers from the US, Canada, Australia, New Zealand and Mexico is a further indication of the government's growing fondness for the private sector. It follows a decision last month to give foreign corporations the lion's share of a £2bn programme to build fast-track treatment centres to cut the NHS waiting list.
He is expected to say: "We are totally committed to the NHS providing high-quality care, free at the point of need. But this does not mean we cannot learn lessons from insurance-based systems run by private providers elsewhere.
"I want to learn from the market, but not copy it."
Frank Dobson, the former Labour health secretary, said last night: "Usually Labour health ministers have gone to the US to say how good the NHS is, rather than how brilliant the American health system is. John Reid should ask Hillary Clinton what she thinks about their system."
The partnership with Kaiser involves sending teams of clinicians from NHS hospitals and primary care trusts to learn techniques used in the US to improve patient satisfaction and reduce costs.
Kaiser provides medical insurance cover for 8m people and offers specialist medical services to reduce the need for hospital treatment.
A controversial article in the British Medical Journal last year said Kaiser provided substantially better healthcare than the NHS at roughly the same cost. Critics argued, however, that this was partly because of defects in the US health system which left 20% of people uninsured.
Mr Reid will say the government is encouraged by early indications from trials of Kaiser's methods in Torbay, St Albans, Taunton Deane, Northampton, East Sussex, Eastern Birmingham, Blackpool, and Lincolnshire South West primary care trusts.
Chris Ham, director of the department's strategy unit, will say: "The main lesson from Kaiser is its ability to minimise the use of acute hospital beds through ... a strong focus on the management of people with chronic diseases and the breaking down of barriers between secondary and primary care."
Mr Reid is due to visit a Kaiser hospital in Washington tomorrow and representatives from the company will attend a national conference in London next month.
Sophia Christie, chief executive of Eastern Birmingham primary care trust, said the trial in her area had reduced the number of patients needing an outpatient appointment with an orthopaedic surgeon by 80%.
Andrew Dearden, chairman of the British Medical Association's community care committee, said doctors had been asking the government to switch resources from hospitals to community services for at least 15 years.
He added: "We must be careful we don't get people out of hospital before services in the community are there to support them."
Karen Jennings, head of health for Unison, said there were staffing problems and difficulties discharging patients in the pilot areas. By contrast, the Whittington hospital in north London was developing a home-grown procedure to discharge patients.
"It must be very demoralising for doctors, nurses and other healthcare professionals to be told that experts from outside can do it better than the NHS," she said.
