My local doctors surgery has just signed up for this NEG product.

I and others are not happy about it. However it raises very some real issues.  Clearly the surgery had a problem with its phone system with increasing numbers of patients calling and long periods of constantly engaged phones. A solution was required and as a publicly funded service they are under considerable pressure to find "cost effective" solutions.

They made  a logical solution from their perspective but as you can see from the text below many of their points are factually incorrect.

Should it be the surgery who should be criticised? Perhaps NEG Group or the politicians who fund the surgery? Or perhaps the voters who ultimately choose the politicians?

Personally I would prefer decisions to be made on accurate information. Then if the surgery felt they had no alternative then why not say 'Due to funding restrictions we have introduced a new telephone system paid for by premium rate phone numbers'. At least the patient would know what's what in that increasingly funding is moving stealthily to a 'user pay' system.  

I have reproduced a product outline from NEG and below it a detailed response to my complaint from the surgery. Our local MP has expressed interest in following up on this. Underlining is mine!

Before responding to the surgery I would welcome comments from the panel.

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NETWORK GROUP EUROPE
Surgery Line
Two years in development - over a million patients using our systems - 96% of callers get through to their surgery first time. NEG Surgery Line™ has an ever growing presence in England, Scotland and Wales.

NEG Surgery Line™ is the bespoke telephony solution for GP Surgeries.

The revolutionary self-funding Telephone system for GP surgeries is no longer just a telephone system… With offerings for the hard of hearing, personal fax services, queue busting solutions in the waiting room and clinical indicator information generation.

2005 will also see the launch of the online forum and information portal for the ever growing family of extremely happy Surgery Line practitioners.

Yes it’s free — Sounds good already!
In the majority of applications, NEG Surgery Line™ is completely self-financing! — Want to know how we do it? For an information pack, please click here.
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Response from my local surgery.

1. Calls to 0844 numbers are charged at 4.2 pence per minute + VAT the same as BT's standard (non-discounted) local rate charge.
2. No profit is paid to NEG, the phone system suppliers, as a result of patients calling this surgery. Moreover, NEG receive no revenue at all as a result of income generated by the calls. Moreover, NEG receive no revenue at all as a result of income generated by the calls.
3. Patients are not paying 'through their taxes' for this service. We do not receive any monies from the PCT or Government to support the practice telephone system.
4. Most non-geographic numbers (080, 084, 087) are excluded from free call plans. We chose a 'lo-call' rate number as this service allowed all calls to be answered even if our lines are busy, informing the caller of the anticipated time it will take the caller to be dealt with by our receptionist. The caller now has the choice to either hold the line or to call back at a less busy time. We feel this is a much better option than a constant engaged tone. Interestingly we found that many patients actually used the BT press 5 for callback" upon hearing  the engaged tone resulting in a higher call cost when finally connected. I cannot comment on the fact that you pay only 2 pence per hour for phone calls, we base our calculations on market priced 'tier one' service providers such as BT. Wih over 400 service providers in the UK., it is a matter of personal choice as to which company an individual selects to use.
5. We provide a 'national rate' 087 number for rare emergency calls from overseas callers, as this allows the same functionality as residential 084 numbers, with the introduction of 24 hour services coupled with multiple time zones we believe the extra functionality will outweigh the additional cost incurred by overseas callers.
6. Without resorting to semantics, 08 numbers are not premium rate. By definition  premium rate numbers start with 09 and are charged at £0.10 - £1.50 per minute.
7. There are several beneficial features that are not available on a 'normal phone number/telephone system' 084 numbers allow the surgery to monitor the amount of engaged calls. It also provides instant disaster and recovery in the event of line failure at the surgery and call routing based on time of day, all fundamental features that will allow us to enhance the services we offer.

Most of our patients are pleased with the new service, we now answer calls faster, patients are put on hold less and , due to better telephone line utilisation, we can handle more calls than before. Our records also indicate that the average time a patient has to spend on the phone calling the surgery has been reduced, so although there may be  slight increase in the actual cost of the call per minute, the actual call duration has been reduced.

It is also important to note that should you call at a time when the surgery is not open you can actually save money and time as you now only make one telephone call as opposed to two.

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RBJ

Surely BT now list 0870, 0871, 0845 and 0844 as "premium" rate - or they did if they have now changed it again?

All the crap about people being on hold less and utilising phone lines more efficiently is total technical nonsense. This scam is all about having more lines into the same bottle-neck. That is the whole idea and this is how the main revenue is generated. There are still the same number of receptionists answering calls. There are just more lines going in so that people then have to queue on line. At least where normal lines are engaged due to lots of patients attempting to ring in patients do not incur costs, particularly invalids, the chronically sick and pensioners.

All that is being done with all of these systems is to make people wait in a queue on line to generate revenue instead of waiting for one of the real lines to each receptionist to become free (i.e. no longer engaged). The waiting time will never be any different. It is solely about the ratio of receptionists each with a real incoming line to the number of patients attempting to call in at any particular time. This is basic traffic engineering, and these constraints can never be changed. You can prove this extremely easily with Monti Carlo analysis.

The whole thing with all of these types of companies is marketing bamboozle.

wrote on Sep 15^th, 2005 at 5:54pm:

Surely BT now list 0870, 0871, 0845 and 0844 as "premium" rate - or they did if they have now changed it again? All the crap about people being on hold less and utilising phone lines more efficiently is total technical nonsense. This scam is all about having more lines into the same bottle-neck. That is the whole idea and this is how the main revenue is generated. There are still the same number of receptionists answering calls. There are just more lines going in so that people then have to queue on line. At least where normal lines are engaged due to lots of patients attempting to ring in patients do not incur costs, particularly invalids, the chronically sick and pensioners. All that is being done with all of these systems is to make people wait in a queue on line to generate revenue instead of waiting for one of the real lines to each receptionist to become free (i.e. no longer engaged). The waiting time will never be any different. It is solely about the ratio of receptionists each with a real incoming line to the number of patients attempting to call in at any particular time. This is basic traffic engineering, and these constraints can never be changed. You can prove this extremely easily with Monti Carlo analysis. The whole thing with all of these types of companies is marketing bamboozle.

Excellent summary dorf.

Thanks Bill. Glad you agree.

wrote on Sep 15^th, 2005 at 6:58pm:

Excellent summary dorf.

Ditto  :)