Health bosses who spent £80,000 on private healthcare to ease packed wards said they “would do it again.”

Almost 30 patients recovering from operations at the Royal Sussex County Hospital in Brighton were transferred to the Nuffield Hospital,Woodingdean, during the first three months of this year.

The transfer policy was introduced as the Royal Sussex dealt with an unprecedented number of winter patients after an outbreak of flu across the county.

Many elderly patients were admitted to the Brighton hospital suffering from respiratory problems and demand for space was high.

A spokeswoman from Brighton and Hove City Primary Care Trust (PCT) said the project with Nuffield ended on March 31 but added that they would do it again in the future if it became necessary.

She said: “This is about making sure the right patients are treated in the right place and making sure the higher cost, more specialist resources of the Royal Sussex are available for patients who need them.”

A Royal Sussex spokesman said the winter was their busiest on record. She added: “As one measure to help us free up beds for the high numbers of emergency patients coming through our doors, we put in place a short term agreement to transfer patients to the Nuffield Hospital who were not quite ready to go home but no longer needed acute hospital care.

“In total 29 patients were transferred to the Nuffield as part of this agreement."

A spokesman for Nuffield said it had been pleased to help reduce the load on the NHS and it would be happy to help again in the future.

The issue of using private hospitals hit the headline earlier this year when The Argus revealed patients from the Royal Sussex were being sent for surgery to the Nuffield because it was cheaper than the NHS doing the operations itself.

The hospital paid out between £800 and £1,200 per patient to help ease a backlog of operations such as a hernia or gall bladder.

Opening up operating theatres at the Royal Sussex at the weekend to deal with the backlog would cost between £1,200 and £1,800 per operation.

This was due to the extra cost of bringing in surgeons and other medical staff as well as paying for lighting and heating.

A spokesman for the Patient Action Group in Sussex said he understood having to ease winter pressures but said he would rather see more beds opened in NHS hospitals rather than send patients to private ones.