One of the world's most famous hospitals is considering whether to offer NHS patients heart operations under special packages to cut waiting lists.

Officials at Groote Schuur hospital in Cape Town, South Africa, and health advisers in the West Midlands are trying to excite government interest in a scheme which could also provide much needed resources for the hospital where, in 1967, Christian Barnard conducted the first heart transplant.

Unofficial discussions have so far indicated that patients might be flown out and undergo their operations for around two-thirds of the cost of similar procedures here.

The idea is still fledgling and the Department of Health appears cool on the concept of letting mainstream NHS treatment be conducted outside the EU. Patients from south coast health authorities are being sent to French and German hospitals for long awaited operations on joints and cataracts under pilot schemes approved by the health secretary, Alan Milburn.

Advocates argue South Africa has the capacity to do the heart operations and some of the best surgeons in the world. One procedure, for cardiac artery bypass grafts, using veins from patients' legs to replace arteries, might be offered for about £7,000 rather than the cost of around £11,000 in this country.

Andrew Rouse, a lecturer in the department of public health medicine at Birmingham University and an adviser to the local health authority, said Britain could not keep up with the demand for such operations. "The government in South Africa, quite reasonably, is moving resources from high-tech hospitals to the homelands. In Cape Town, they have a lot of excess capacity and highly regarded institutions. They have a good track record internationally for patients who have paid out of their own pocket and gone there."

Dr Rouse was concerned that the Department of Health wanted to limit sending NHS patients simply to European countries. "This is an unnecessary restriction. In Birmingham 20% of our population are first or second generation immigrants, mainly from India, Singapore and Indonesia. They quite often go home for treatment. For something like cataract surgery, they would still be waiting here when it costs next to nothing in Delhi."

But a spokeswoman for the Department of Health said: "We don't envisage patients travelling outside Europe unless exceptional circumstances apply. Criteria for patients outside the EU have not even been determined yet. It is unlikely to happen and we are concentrating on pilot sites."