The waiting time for heart surgery has fallen to just three weeks in some parts of Britain, in what is seen as a ground-breaking example of how the NHS can cut into the queues for treatment.

There has been such a dramatic decline in the delay facing patients who need a heart bypass operation that Ministers are planning a new phase in the battle on waiting lists. They want to see hospital trusts moving on to tackle 'hidden waits', such as the delay between seeing a GP and receiving the essential diagnostic scans.

Part of the success lies in the fact that two years ago, health service managers made a highly controversial decision to buy a private hospital in central London, lock, stock and barrel, in order to treat more patients. The acquisition of the Heart Hospital for £27m was seen as a huge political gamble, but it has had an enormous impact.

There are now only 300 patients who have waited six months or more across England for a coronary artery bypass graft, a tenfold decline in two years. The figure is so low it is seen as insignificant in health service terms. By March, it is expected no one will have waited more than three months for the surgery - extraordinary given the queues of the past, when patients frequently died while waiting.

In December 2001, when NHS leaders began to try and cut into the queues, 1,615 people had waited nine months or more for an operation. Nearly 500 had been waiting over a year. By this month, no one had waited more than nine months, with the majority being operated on within three. At the Heart Hospital, part of the University College London Hospitals Trust, most patients undergo surgery within four weeks.

When the Heart Hospital came into the NHS, it began to clear the waiting lists in London then offered to do the same for other parts of the country.

But, as part of a nationwide plan, thousands more heart patients have also been given statins - drugs that lower cholesterol and which have prevented around 6,000 people a year from suffering heart attacks.

More patients are also being given angioplasties, a minimally invasive procedure where an artery is opened up to allow the blood to flow through to the heart, instead of the patient undergoing a full bypass operation.

The greatest difficulty faced by patients now is the long wait for the diagnostic heart X-ray, known as an angiogram, which will show the extent of the heart disease and has to be undertaken before the surgery.

There are also long waits for magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) scans to diagnose particular conditions, yet no national records are kept of the wait and there is no incentive for trusts to reduce the delay. A recent Audit Commission study found up to 250,000 people had to wait five months for an MRI scan.

But the clearing of the heart surgery lists allows managers to think of new ways of using facilities to improve care. Neil Griffiths, manager of the Heart Hospital, said: 'This is a huge success story for the NHS. I don't think anyone two years ago could have predicted we would have got to this point.

'To all intents and purposes, we no longer have a waiting list for this surgery. The question now is how we build on it to shorten the wait for diagnosis, and probably to perform other kinds of surgery.'