Sorry everyone.  DaveM has reminded me that I have not put up the amended letter.  This is the letter I finally sent, having taken all of your thoughts about my initial draft.

I refer to our past correspondence. 

I think that you may have been ill advised either by your PCT, the Government, or your switchboard supplier - now that you have changed your number from 0870 428 0773 to 0844 477 8648. 

The penalty to call you is now even worse than it was when you had your 0870 number, which was bad enough.  Allow me to explain.

The following table shows the cost of a 1 minute call to your surgery from a residential phone.

NOTE - YOU WILL HAVE TO IMAGINE THAT A TABLE GOES HERE, SHOWING COSTS OF CALLS TO AN 0870 AND 0844 FOR DAY, EVENING AND WEEKENDS

0870
7.51p
3.75p
1.50p
0844
5.00p
5.00p
5.00p

A daytime call to a 01380 number with BT, on their standard tariff costs just 3p a minute. During the weekends and evenings an hour-long call costs just 5½p. Some supplier tariffs have free calls to ‘normal’ 01 or 02 numbers.  Your patients cannot benefit from these tariffs when they call your surgery.

Your suppliers’ statement on their website and a bulletin from Customer Service Call Centre at the Department of Health, state that 0844 numbers are ‘guaranteed low rate call’ or lo-call’ numbers.  This is incorrect - they are high cost numbers to call.

You can clearly see that the rate you now force patients to pay to call you is excessively high when compared to a call to a 01 or 02 number.  The situation worsens if a patient has to use a phone box, as many do, to reach you.  This call will cost your patients 30p for the same duration!  This is even higher than the cost of calling your 0870 number.  So, you penalise further those that are disadvantaged.  Calling your 0844 number from a mobile phone can be over 10p a minute!

This excessive charge generates a rebate.  This rebate, or income, is created on every call to your surgery number.  Someone is earning revenue from each call to your practice.  I trust you are aware of part 18 clause 483 of the Standard Medical Services Contract?  It states:

“The contractor shall not, either itself or through any other person, demand or accept from any patient of it’s a fee or other remuneration for its own or another’s benefit.”

The use of revenue generating phone numbers is contrary to this provision because it means acceptance of remuneration from your patients.  It is irrelevant if this income is paid to you or if your supplier uses it to fund supplying your switchboard.

I know one of your patients hung up when trying to reach you, because they thought they had the wrong number and was confused to hear ‘press 1 for appointments, 2 for enquiries etc.  When she tried to redial, she pressed the wrong number she was so confused.  This is not an ‘improved service’ as you claim.

I now respectfully request, under The Freedom of Information (FOI) Act passed on 30 November 2000 that you supply me with the 01380 terminating number for your surgery and all other numbers in your practise where you have an 0870 or 0845 numbers.

I very much look forward to hearing from you soon.

Yours sincerely

I trust that some of you others may find this method useful?

Has anyone any thoughts about my reply to the two replies?  Any AND ALL help appreciated.

Quote:

Have you been on safari far far away Smasher?!

NEG are Network Europe Group who have been busy installing their "product", Surgery Line™ (note that they have spent money on trademarking it) in about 300 surgeries. There are quite a few threads on it. See here. See also their website here.

I have done nothing - mainly as I have been a bit busy.

However, some thoughts - reply letter 1
I assume that I will need the surgery's permission to talk to NEG about their account with them? Should I ask for it? But maybe they have given it to me and I simply included a copy of their letter when I write to NEG?  Any thoughts?

Reply letter 2.
I am waiting for further correspondence from the partner, following their partner meeting.  I shall do nothing with this unless I do not hear from them in a month (they must have at least one partners meeting in a month don't you think?) - when I will badger the partner for a reply.  Any thoughts of what to say when I do?

Well done crickteer for your efforts. Have you any more news>?

Cricketer.
There is another thread running on a similar vein entitled(SICK PAYING £5 to see GP) i dont know if you have read it.If not you might find the info helpful.

Hello Cricketer

The Freedom of Information Act gives right to access information held by public authorities including:

Central Government
Local Authorities
NHS Service
Schools
Police

It does not confer any rights with regard to information held by organisations that are not in the public sector, such as NEG.  Although you could try contacting NEG  referring to the surgery's reply to letter 1, I doubt if you will get a meaningful answer.

The surgery may just have tried to fob you off.  There are 3 possibilities:

a) the surgery has genuinely no information;

b) the surgery has some geographical numbers but they are unaware that these are the underlying numbers to their 0844 number;

c) the reply is a lie.

If a) is the case there is nothing to access, i.e. the FOI does not apply.

b) may be a likely scenario, therefore your request to the surgery should be pursued.

The likely answer to your reference to the GPs' Standard Medical Services Contract, Part 18, clause 483 will be that this clause applies to medical treatment and making appointments is is not part of the actual treatment.  I got this reply from the National Audit Office. However, I do not accept it because most surgeries nowadays operate an appointment-only system and I would argue that appointment are an integral part of treatment and clause 483 does apply.

As to further action I see the following options:

Assuming that b) is the case and the surgery does know of some geographical numbers which they have but do not associate it with 0844 you could make a further FOI request asking them to disclose all geographical (landline) numbers in their possession.

The situation vis a vis NEG is more tricky. You could write to NEG, wait for their reply which is almost certainly going to be useless, and go back to surgery saying that you could not get the information you sought and since NEG are contractors to the surgery it is up to the surgery to obtain the information from NEG.

A further option might be an appeal.

Thank you very much for these two posts Sophos.

I think that I will try this approach to the person that tried to fob me off with asking me to contact NEG:

Thank you for your letter asking me go contact NEG.

However, the Freedom of Information Act only covers the right to access of information from public authorities.  NEG are not covered by this act.  You are covered by this act.

Therefore, I respectfully repeat my request to provide me with the 01380 number that your 0844 and 0870 number (now that you are using both) is terminated at.

If you are unaware of your 01380 number then a simple request to NEG from you will provide the answer.  NEG have to know your 01380 number as they connect your 0844 and 0870 numbers to this geographic number - thus ensuring that callers reach your switchboard and nobody else's.

I look forward to hearing from you soon.

What do you think?  Can you improve on this?  You seem to have been here as well?

I have not yet had an answer from the  partner that replied.  I shall wait a bit before I chase this, to allow them time to have a 'partners meeting'.