AIREDALE Hospital is sending female patients who need breast x-rays to Bradford while it looks for a new radiology specialist.

The Steeton hospital is temporarily moving women who require breast diagnosis to St Luke's Hospital in Bradford as it seeks a replacement for Dr Clive Orgles.

In the meantime the treatment and care of patients with breast related conditions will continue at Airedale.

Due to a shortage of consultants in the field of breast diagnosis, members of the trust board are uncertain as to how long it will take to fill the vacancy.

Chief executive Bob Allen said: "We hope the situation will change and we hope to appoint a consultant of our own but this isn't a speciality that is popular and it's no way guaranteed that we'll be able to recruit.

"Surgeons are travelling to St Luke's and they are bringing pathology specimens back here. It's not ideal, but it's a very reasonable stop-gap measure."

Airedale's medical director Dr Paul Godwin said: "There is no immediate answer to this shortage and we aren't the only trust who can't recruit.

"We are committed to providing the service locally as there are 1,500 women with symptoms of breast diseases each year and we are addressing that and how we can address that in the future.

"We are taking months rather than weeks to get the high quality services we need."

Non-executive director Vanessa Moore asked if a locum consultant could be installed in the post as a temporary measure.

Dr Godwin added that locums specialising in this clinical area just didn't exist.

Mr Allen added: "Great thanks must go to Bradford Hospitals Trust for making our staff welcome and providing a good quality of service."

Dr Godwin also warned members that care levels would suffer unless more doctors were employed throughout the hospital.

He said consultants were already breaching the European Union's Working Time Directive by working more hours than they were contracted for.

And he is concerned about how the trust will fund a potential increase in the number of locum doctors needed to cover consultants who didn't want to work over their allotted hours.

Dr Godwin said: "There aren't enough consultants across the county to fill gaps in the Working Time Directive. It is one thing to introduce legislation and another to work out how you are going to apply it.

"The trust should be aware that we are working with the bare minimum of people. We want to provide quality of care but we do need to employ higher staff levels."

Director of finance Janet Crouch said that since the introduction of the Working Time Directive, the trust had received extra Government cash to pay for holiday entitlements, but not for bringing in extra staff.

She added that the trust was still waiting to see if the Regional Office would approve its plan for a capital to revenue transfer to finance the £750,000 that would ensure the trust did not run a deficit budget.

In addition, Mrs Crouch said the trust was showing an expenditure overspend at the end of May of around £5,000.

She said: "The overspend is largely down to locum costs in surgery and medicine and additional waiting list sessions."