British hospital phone-call ripoff

Patientline, the company that provides telephones at hospital bedsides, is to increase its prices by up to 160 per cent. Charges for outgoing calls will rise from 10p a minute to 26p. This compares with about 3p a minute for the basic BT rate. Incoming calls to patients cost 39p per minute off-peak and 49p a minute at peak times.

Yesterday the company said that it was not wholly responsible for the hike in charges; delays to the Health Service IT project were also to blame. Patientline told The Times that it had invested 160 million pounds in installing 75,000 bedside consoles in more than 150 hospitals. In 2005, Patientline was investigated by regulators over its high charges, but was cleared of any wrongdoing.

Seven years ago the company won contracts with NHS hospitals to provide the consoles, which, at the Government’s recommendation, provided for doctors to access the proposed electronic patient record system and for electronic prescribing and ordering of X-rays, as well as telephone and entertainment services. The additional services were intended to be integrated into the National Programme for IT, with Patientline being paid for electronic record and prescribing schemes as NHS trusts used them. After years of delays to the 6.2 billion project, such systems are not yet online, and Patientline and other companies say that they have been forced to recoup their costs through charging patients to make calls.

Patientline has admitted that it is 80 million in debt and that it currently has money left to operate only for the next 12 months. The NHS does not subsidise or receive money from calls. Colin Printer, the company’s marketing manager, said “As a private sector company, we’ve put millions of pounds worth of equipment into these hospitals and that’s a massive investment for us. Each bedside system cost 1,700 pounds to install, and across the country they were maintained and supervised by 800 staff, Mr Printer said. “They are significant pieces of kit, designed not only to provide phone, television and radio services but also the internet, and electronic medical care. “It is not possible to attach a specific figure to revenues that may have been anticipated from delivering other services for which Patientline equipment is designed, such as electronic patient records and electronic meal-ordering, but it is fair to say Patientline anticipated a greater rollout of these services. “It looks like the patient’s being asked to pay for the cost of everything, which was not the original intention.”

To date, only one hospital has implemented the electronic patient record system and only a few have adopted meal-ordering, according to Patientline. It says that while call charges will increase, the cost of the complete bedside “package” will fall from 3.50 a day to 2.90. Charlotte Brown, the company’s commercial director said: “We’ve realigned our prices to bring the price of TV, which the majority of people watch, to a much lower level.” The price of packages for people staying for longer than a few days would fall, and such patients would be able to get free games and internet services, she added.

The Government has maintained that these services are a luxury and should not be funded by taxpayers. However, the Patients Association says that patients often have no choice but to use Patientline because many hospitals no longer have public pay phones. Mobile phone use has previously been restricted or banned, although some hospitals are relaxing the rules in accordance with recent government guidancesubject to the discretion of ward managers.

Michael Summers, of the association, said that the cost of incoming calls was already high and that the latest increase would lead to more complaints. “These people are ill, often recovering from operations, and the hike from 10p to 26p to phone out is really too much. People are going to be really upset with this,” he said. The Department of Health said: “Arrangements with providers of bedside entertainment systems are agreed locally, and Patientline should be discussing any proposed pricing restructuring with NHS trusts.”

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Government operating theatres shut down in Australia despite high-demand

A STRING of hospitals has been forced to close operating theatres over the Easter holiday break, according to the State Opposition. Opposition health spokesman Helen Shardey said yesterday the stoppage at several regional and two metropolitan hospitals reflected the Bracks Government's failure to adequately fund the hospitals. Kyneton District Health Service, Kilmore Hospital, Bairnsdale Regional Health Service, Casey Hospital and Monash Medical Centre will each close its theatres for a fortnight. Echuca Regional Health will stop elective surgery for three weeks, after a two-week shutdown over Christmas.

But the hospitals and the State Government deny any funding shortfall, saying the routine closures were largely to allow staff to have time off over the holiday period. Ms Shardey said the hospitals were "feeling obliged to say that". "There are concerns that they are running short of funds and are being forced into this action," she said. Ms Shardey said it was inappropriate for the theatres to close for routine surgery while more than 36,000 patients remained on Victoria's waiting lists. "These latest closures are enough to cause further delays in waiting times for essential surgery when patients have already waited long enough," Ms Shardey said.

But Bairnsdale Regional Health Service CEO Gary Gray denied his hospital in East Gippsland was closing surgery for financial reasons. "We are actually operating at a surplus at the moment," Mr Gray said. "We work our closures around Christmas and Easter as part of our leave management strategy; obviously that is when we get the most requests for leave from our staff. "No one is going to have to wait longer for surgery," he said.

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For greatest efficiency, lowest cost and maximum choice, ALL hospitals and health insurance schemes should be privately owned and run -- with government-paid vouchers for the very poor and minimal regulation. Both Australia and Sweden have large private sector health systems with government reimbursement for privately-provided services so can a purely private system with some level of government reimbursement or insurance for the poor be so hard to do?

For more postings from me, see TONGUE-TIED, GREENIE WATCH, POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, FOOD & HEALTH SKEPTIC, GUN WATCH, EDUCATION WATCH, AUSTRALIAN POLITICS, DISSECTING LEFTISM, IMMIGRATION WATCH and EYE ON BRITAIN. My Home Pages are here or here or here. Email me (John Ray) here. For times when blogger.com is playing up, there are mirrors of this site here and here.

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