Patients undergoing surgery at Oxford's Nuffield Orthopaedic Centre are receiving some of the most expensive treatment in England.

The first league tables detailing how much NHS trusts charge for the same surgery across England were published yesterday.

They revealed that operations in the most expensive hospitals can cost nearly six times more than those in the least expensive.

The Nuffield in Windmill Road, Headington, is among the most expensive trusts which include the Walton Centre for Neurology and Neurosurgery, Liverpool; United Leeds Teaching Hospitals; and the Royal Orthopaedic in Birmingham. Health Minister Alan Milburn said high-cost hospitals would face tough new efficiency targets to improve quality as well as cost.

He said: "This new information reveals unexplained and unacceptable discrepancies in costs between hospitals. Variations in the quality of care is unfair but so is variation in efficiency."

But Colin Jones, the chief executive of the Nuffield Orthopaedic Centre, said: "It doesn't draw any conclusions at all. I'm quite concerned about the reference to quality.

"I would find it very difficult to find a hospital with higher quality in terms of its services and standards anywhere in the country. The implication that there's a problem with quality is I think without foundation."

Mr Jones added: "In terms of efficiency it's nonsense. If you look at the hospitals in the top ten they are virtually all teaching hospitals or specialist ones or both.

"The conclusion you draw from that is that we are handling much more complex cases."

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