GOVERNMENT troubleshooters have been called in as the crisis over debts and the increasing waiting lists deepens at the Royal United Hospital in Bath.

On Friday two independent reports revealed that the hospital has massive debts, and that it has also released inaccurate waiting lists.

The shock revelations come after Health Secretary Alan Milburn told the House of Commons that only two patients in the country had been waiting more than 15 months for an operation, both by the Bath hospital.

One of the reports revealed that the hospital is more than £17 million in debt, despite earlier predictions it would be only £4 million in the red.

The second of the two, both commissioned by the board of the Royal United Hospital NHS Trust in November last year, looked into the reporting of waiting lists. It found that in March last year the hospital reported that 122 outpatients had waited more than 13 months for an appointment, when the actual figure was more than 2,000 people.

The report found that breaches of a guaranteed maximum wait for in-patients of 18 months had also been underreported.

It went on to criticise chaotic and inadequate reporting systems and highlighted poor staff and management training.

"Policies on waiting list management were absent, inadequate or not implemented," it said.

It also stressed that attempts made to remedy the waiting list problems were inadequate.

In the wake of the crisis the trust's chairman Gerald Chown has stepped down, and financial director Martin Dove has been suspended from his job.

The trust has now called in health expert Robert Tinston, formerly the director of the NHS Executive North West Regional Office, to investigate and advise it on whether disciplinary action should be taken against any staff.

Richard Gleave, who took over as the trust's chief executive in November last year, said: "We are working with local primary care trusts, the Avon, Gloucestershire and Wiltshire Strategic Health Authority and the Directorate of Health and Social Care to address the issues raised in both reports."

North Wiltshire MP James Gray said he was not surprised by the reports' findings.

"Over the five years as MP, I have heard of many cases of people having to wait a long time," he said.

Mr Gray said he had been suspicious of the figures. "It just didn't ring true. I have a filing cabinet full of cases."

He blamed the management of the Royal United Hospital and the overall management of the health service for the problems in Bath.

"It is obvious to anyone who visits the hospital often that the management has been a shambles," said Mr Gray.

"But these problems are symptomatic of a much wider problem in the health service of underfunding and complete mismanagement."

He criticised the health service for having more managers than beds and for being run from a desk in Whitehall.

Mr Gray said he hoped that the publication of the two reports would lead to improvements in the service offered by the troubled hospital. "Half of my constituents use the Royal United Hospital. This is just not acceptable."