MILLIONS of pounds need to be saved at Taunton's Musgrove Park Hospital this financial year, the Taunton and Somerset Trust has said.

Despite the hospital breaking even last year, senior nursing staff have been told £6.5 million needs to be saved to meet "significant challenges" ahead of them in 2006/07.

And to meet that target a number of innovative projects are being planned, aimed at improving patient experience and making the hospital more efficient.

One idea is to reduce the average length of stay for inpatients by getting them in when needed, and not before, and sending them home on time.

If successful this will mean a reduction in the number of hospital beds needed and could lead to a ward becoming available for use as something else.

A spokesman for the hospital said: "This improvement in the average length of stay will allow us to better manage emergency demand.

"At the same time, as circumstances allow and beds empty, we expect to be able to take beds out of the hospital.

"We will only take beds out of the system as the improvements in length of stay are achieved so that our ability to treat patients is not affected.

"The most likely scenario were this to happen would be that we would use a ward to provide a surgical admissions unit, or a similar patient service that we do not have room for at the moment.

"So the ward might not be a ward as now, but it would still be used for providing patient care."

The spokesman also said it is not expected the changes will result in any job losses.