An interesting article in scotsman.com (http://news.scotsman.com/index.cfm?id=70392006) titled "Anger over lottery of hospital charges", including:

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THE astronomical cost of charges imposed on relatives and friends comforting their sick loved ones in hospital has been laid bare by The Scotsman.

Visitors to Scotland's hospitals face a postcode lottery of parking fees. Families also face exorbitant costs contacting their relatives in hospitals using private telephone lines that charge up to 49p per minute for incoming calls, more than the cost of phoning Australia on standard land lines. Charges for patients watching TV add to the overall burden, which can reach £55 a week or more. [...]

Unions representing health workers in Glasgow and Edinburgh have consistently complained about the costs of parking, although the Executive recommends sufficient car parking space and concessionary car parking rates should be available. Apart from the ten named hospitals, all others provide parking for free. However, patients are also being charged to contact patients by phone in many hospitals.

Eight hospitals in Scotland have a system installed which is run by the Patientline firm: Crosshouse Hospital in Kilmarnock, Ayr Hospital, Dumfries and Galloway Royal Infirmary, Aberdeen Royal Infirmary, Monklands hospital in Airdrie, Edinburgh Royal Infirmary, Raigmore Hospital in Inverness and Glasgow Royal Infirmary.

The firm charges £3.50 a day for watching television, although under-16s get free access, while it is half price for OAPs and long-stay patients. Patients can use the phone for the same cost as a payphone but incoming calls are 39p per minute off peak or 49p per minute at peak times. Phoning Australia from home during the day costs just under 22p a minute.

A spokesman for Patientline said costs were kept as low as possible.

An adult patient at the ERI who chose to sign up for Patientline would pay £3.50 a day for television. Two daily visits from close family members would add £4.40 in parking fees - assuming they took full advantage of visiting time and spent an hour at the bedside on each visit. That adds up to £7.90 a day, or £55.30 a week, without phone calls.

Tom Waterstone, chairman of the health services group executive at Unison, said it was "immoral" to charge the sick and their families. He said staff, patients and visitors were suffering from private companies' involvement.

"I do not think patients or visitors know the money they spend is not going to health services - it is going to into the pockets of fat cats," he said. "Patients can pay up to £30 per day for visiting Edinburgh Royal Infirmary three times, but it is free to park at Ocean Terminal. It is morally wrong." [...]
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And, whilst off-topic, the following part of the article so sums up the state of public service in the UK:

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IN THE final days of his wife's life, the last thing on Henry Robertson's mind was the parking charges he might be running up visiting her bedside.

Even when the costs came to more than £600, he had more fundamental concerns.

"At the time you are faced with your wife's health and her future - she had three major operations - you just do not consider that you're paying on a daily basis," he said.

His wife Jean, 69, was at the Royal Infirmary in Edinburgh for seven months battling kidney failure and cancer. She died in January last year.

Mr Robertson had not thought anything of paying about £3.20 for every visit but he was furious when he finally sat down to calculate the total cost and discovered he had been forced to pay £604.60. [...]
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Sadly I wouldn't be suprised if you discovered this was actually true.... who is to say that the payphone they are comparing with is a BT one.... probably as part of the "consession" they also replace the payphones.... for ones that conveniently charge the same amount as the bedside phones. 

I know what BT payphones charge.

My understanding is that it isn't uncommon for at the same time as these bedside terminal contracts are agree the hospitals also enter into new payphone contracts as well on the grounds that they are offering a higher site rental deal than BT. Have a look at http://www.premier-payphones.co.uk/ and then the page on company future - they even appear worse than Patientcall using a pn2 ranges at 50p/min at all times from a BT line.

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pn2 is 50p per minute.

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Apart from the term 'infinitely' and the slight inaccuracies in charges, that's clearly true, but it was not I that mentioned Patientline not using the highest rate.

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It's still 49p/39p/39p.

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I'm afraid I'm still not privy to Patientline's revenue projections, so I can only repeat that I must presume that the rates are set at the level that the company believes are required to achieve the revenue needed to cover its operating costs, repay its borrowings and provide a return for its investors.
Interesting that you're still targetting only one of the companies - can we assume you have some connection with the other and are keen to keep attention focussed on Patientline?

c__m__h wrote on Jan 16^th, 2006 at 1:35pm:

I don't know in how many hospitals - if any - Patientline also has the payphone concession. Certainly not in my local acute hospital (nor BT).

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'A firm or two'? You mean their competitors?  

pw4 wrote on Jan 18^th, 2006 at 12:05am:


No I mean some business acquiantances of Mr Lewis in the Payphone trade who are seen to have a symbiotic relationship by helping to ensure patients have no option but to use the Patientline service.  I wonder if any shares of the companies providing the new Payphone services are in fact owned by any directors of Patientline?