Increased use of day surgery involving no overnight stay in hospital could save £8m a year, according to an official report.

Audit Scotland said day surgery rates had continued to improve but remained lower than in England and there was a wide variation between health boards.

NHS Fife achieved more than 80% of the relevant targets while NHS Tayside achieved less than 30%.

The Scottish Government said it was on track to meet targets.

The report said national targets had been met in more than half of 19 more common procedures.

These included circumcision, cataract removal and hernia repair.

It also noted that the NHS in Scotland had made “steady progress in carrying out more surgical procedures as day surgery since targets were first introduced in the 1990s”.

But it said more operations could still be carried out in this way.

Robert Black, the Auditor General for Scotland, said: “It’s long been recognised that day surgery benefits patients through promoting a speedy recovery and minimising the disruption that an overnight stay in hospital can have on people’s lives.

“It also promotes a more efficient use of NHS resources by reducing waiting times and freeing up hospital beds.”

The report said there was considerable variation among NHS boards in the percentage of operations carried out as day surgery, which could not be explained by differences in location or patients’ circumstances.

There was also a wide variation within individual boards in their day surgery performance for different types of operations.

It recommended that NHS boards should monitor the levels of same-day surgery both by hospital and speciality and take appropriate action where rates were low.

It also said the NHS needed to improve recording of outpatient procedures.

Health Secretary Nicola Sturgeon said: “Increasing day surgery rates are now treated as a key part of meeting the new waiting time target of 18 weeks by 2011.

“Each board will be expected to agree improvement milestones which they will be expected to achieve by the target date. We expect clinicians to be fully involved and put in place necessary training and facilities.”

Commenting on the report, the Liberal Democrat health spokesperson Ross Finnie MSP called for an urgent investigation to discover why there was such a variation between health boards.

Mr Finnie said: “It’s important that any local barriers to same-day surgery are identified and tackled. This will not only benefit patients, but will ensure the most efficient use of NHS resources.”