Yet our friends at Ofcom last week feigned shock and surprise when I suggested that the fact they had already specifically revised PNS rules to allow Patientline scamming to continue (provided it becomes DDI) made it inevitable that they would also sign off the use of the 50p per minute 070 phone numbers in their current pricing investigation.

Dave wrote on Dec 1^st, 2005 at 11:43am:


Yes I suppose that would have worked in a hospital phone system like broadband on a BT line where although BT provides the hardware infrastructure you can take the broadband service from any one of a very large number of different providers.

But as Patientline is a monopolist here there is no downward pressure on prices and they merely have to avoid setting the price so high that patients stop using the service altogether or so high that it is worthwhile for a competitor to enter the marketplace (assuming that is that the NHS would even allow this to happen).

I am at a loss to understand why Patientline would need to charge any more than the 0870 weekday daytime rate to satisfactorily cover the cost of its NTS call re-routing facilities which are the same as on 0870.  The unit by the patient bedside seems to have its capital cost repaid through the daily tv rental charge, which brings in income of over £1,000 per annum per bed.

The easiest way for Ofcom to have dealt with Patientline would have been to rule that this was an inappropriate 070 use and to force them to move to an 087 or 09 prefixed number.  To suggest that they legalise the previously illegal 070 use but are then going to tell Patientline which 070 tariff they can charge seems highly unlikely.  Unless of course they decided to cap all 070 personal number uses at no more than 10p per minute?

I would place the low cost internet numbers in their own number class too (eg 04 or 06) or move them to 09.  Since people using these numbers have a permanent weekly relationship they are going to know that they cost 1p per minute and not be put off using them by the 09 number prefix.

I have read with interest the comments people have made on this site about Patientline.

I am not from Patientline or the NHS, the only connection I do have is that I am the Chairman of a Hospital Radio station and I do know one of the Regional Engineers from Patientline.

Being in Hospital Radio for 18 years, I remember the bad old days, when you had just ONE pay phone per ward and if someone wanted to speak to a Patient, they had to phone the Hospital switchboard and then be put through to the ONE nurses station phone in the ward, and then somehow the Patient had to get to that phone, because it sure was not at the bedside. As for entertainment, from our own surveys, at any one time 50% of the radios did not work, hospitals faced with fixing the radio or a heart machine funnily enough went for the heart machine, then headsets would constantly   fall off onto the floor so they were thrown out (for H&S reasons). And not forgetting the TV at the end of the ward, stuck on one channel that you had to like, if you were lucky enough to be able to see it!

Now patients have a phone at each bed with a TV and radio, Patientline have a team who repair them all the time and replace headsets, I would say about 90% of them are fully working at any one time in our hospital, so a big improvement for the Patient in communication and entertainment, things Patients really need in such a lonely place.

But, of course this comes at a cost, I am told it costs about a million pounds to set one hospital up with this system. Then you have the ongoing running costs - who is to pay, the already overstretched NHS? Even without this cost at the moment a number of Trusts are in big debt. The age-old problem, someone has to pay, do we really want it to be the Hospital Trusts? If so, you can expect fewer operations and less new equipment etc.

Of course the costs are high compared to mobile phones, but mobile phone companies have a huge market to attract and I am sure lower running costs. But at least the relative or friend can now talk to them, with the old system you would be very lucky to even get through to the ward and now the nurses can get on with the job, rather than answering the phone all the time.

If Patientline goes belly up over this (reading your comments above it seems some would like this to happen), it will be the Patients in hospital that will suffer and will feel very lonely without any of this communication or entertainment in place.

People like to complain, but it is always harder to come up with solutions to difficult issues.

Maybe you could use this forum to come up with some viable ways forward that would solve this issue – rather than, if you do not mind me saying, just moaning.

Lastly, I am sure you have also noticed the LOSE not PROFIT Patientline are running at, so the word profiteering does not really work on this one, surviving is a word I would use.
   

DC wrote on Dec 27^th, 2005 at 3:55am:


£3.50 a day times 365 = £1277.50.  Factor in a little under occupancy and we arrive at £1,000 per annum per bed.

Taking the basic technology of a phone station and a television monitor and some engineer install time it is hard not to imagine that cost being repaid several times over in the first year by the £1,000.

So why does Patientline have to charge so much?  I would bet its pretty likely because they are having to pay the NHS a huge premium for their disgraceful 15 year monopoly on hospital radio and tv services at many NHS hospitals and that this money from patients wanting to just see radio and tv is being used to cross subsidise doctors, nurses, operations and so on.  Since Patientline is not coining it themselves there seems to be no other possible explanation.  Unless of course Mr Derek Lewis is paying himself a salary fo £50 million per annum?  That is fiddling while Rome burns so to speak.

If the service had to just pay its costs and maintenance there is no way one of these bed side stations wth tv should cost more than £350 and the engineer install time may be £100.  It is hard to think of any reason that Patientline is making a loss at the daily rental price and incoming phone prices other than that a huge cross subsidy to NHS medical services is going on.

So let the system make a charge for what it is actually worth but let it be the £5 a week or so that is all that could possibly be needed to cover costs of the equipment and some profit to Patientline and let there not be a double whammy by obscene and unaffordable prices for incoming phone calls.  And "30 an hour to call one's loved ones in hospital while they are forced to keep their mobile phones switched is to me an obscene and disgraceful charge.

I assume if Patientline went bust the bedside systems would then revert to the NHS who could run them at cost.  So non obscene premium for incoming calls and say £3 a week to rent.

The trouble with people like you is that you don't evaluate all the facts but just have a pompously loyalist wish to always support the establishment line.

Quote:


I am not following the 'establishment line', I am giving you the history on the situation to do with patient telephones and entertainment systems, as for facts, not sure you could get anyone better qualified who deals with the patients every week in hospital, if any one group would want to defend patients do you not think it would be Hospital Radio stations. Hospital Radio stations are independent, volunteers run them and most are Charities, raising funds to supply the service 24 hours a day 7 days a week commercial free to all patients.  

Your explanation on how much you think they make out of calls and how easy it is to run, sounds like the ideal company, but obviously not likely as they are making a LOSE, the Trusts do not make a penny out of them FACT- Patientline runs the system for free to the Trust that’s what they like about it, so they can keep the money they do have (from us taxpayers) for operations, staffing, new equipment etc

I do not understand why you think if Patientline went bust the so called NHS could run them at cost, if a company running it charging a 49p a min for some incoming calls (at certain times I might add) cannot break even, how do you think the NHS will? They will still have running costs, staffing, repairs, external content companies to pay etc etc. And it would not be the NHS as such; it would be down to individual    Trusts.  

I will say it again, this is a difficult situation, who pays for the running costs of this bit of kit, it cannot be cheap to run, or as you say Patientline would be conning it in, that they are obviously not.

The comment - 'The daily charge for the equipment, paid by the patient, is surely for the provision of the 'Service'?' from Firestop above, is not correct, Patients are logged on for FREE no daily charge. They do not have to use it if they do not want to, all radio channels are free.

Patients pay 10p a min for outgoing calls, cheaper than a BT payphone! So a relative/friend can come in and buy a phone card for them and then they can ring friends and family with it - at 10p per min.  

I think Ofcom have a big problem, if they stop this call rate (for certain incoming calls) Patientline have said they cannot survive, that is obviously a fact as they are making a lose charging this at the moment and I am sure Ofcom will see this from the company accounts. So say they do stop it, Patineline throws in the towel, who would pick it up without one of the main ways they produce funds to run the service, and try and make a profit and be saddled with heavy debt that would be left from the demise of Patientline. Unlikely any other communications company, so what about the NHS, well they would leave it to the Trusts, and they are very unlikely to take it on, as most are in heavy debt as it is.

Me thinks a political hot potato, not good for the Government to be in this situation as they championed these state of the art communication entertainment systems in hospitals and as Ofcom are a Government quango, I think they will not stop this revenue stream for Patientline that keeps them slightly a float, but we will see, I believe the report is due out at the end of January from Ofcom.  

Dave wrote on Dec 28^th, 2005 at 12:30am:



New technology may well help the situation, but bringing in expensive laptops into the hospital is strongly not recommended.

Patients cannot secure any equipment; they have one bedside locker, than does not have a lock!

I really think it would be a good idea for some of you to visit a hospital and really get to understand what Patients have to go through, before making some of your judgements on the situation