HEALTH chiefs in the North-East have welcomed moves in which paramedics could treat patients in their homes instead of taking them to hospital.

Proposals recommend that some emergency staff could be retrained to allow them to perform tests, prescribe drugs, and treat chronic diseases such as asthma in patients' homes.

They would be called emergency care practitioners and could be dispatched in cars or motorcycles in minutes.

A review of the ambulance service shows that up to a million patients a year are taken to hospital unnecessarily.

The study by the national ambulance advisor, Peter Bradley, to be published this week, also shows that up to nine out of ten emergency calls could be dealt with in other ways than taking a patient to hospital.

The traditional ambulance, with its life support system and two-person team, would be reserved for life-threatening cases.

Last night, the plans were given initial backing from the ambulance service and Government.

Simon Featherstone, the chief executive of the North-East Ambulance Service, said they would welcome the creation of "super paramedics".

He said: "It means that skilled and specialist resources can be allocated where they are needed most -whether that is an accident and emergency (A&E) ambulance containing lifesaving equipment being dispatched to serious incidents, or a doctor working in a busy A&E department receiving fewer non-urgent cases being delivered by ambulance."

Health Secretary Patricia Hewitt said: "If you are a mum and your child has fallen off his bike, you want him checked over, but the last thing you want is to take him to A&E.

"The ambulance service can take on a new role by taking the hospital to you."