pw4 wrote on Feb 12
th, 2007 at 2:36pm:
Quote:Also don't hospitals in most other western European countries and Canada and Australia and NZ also have these facilities now and if so how do they finance them and do any have an equivalent to the ripoff incoming Patientline call charge.
I regret I have no knowledge of facilities in other countries.
The following anecdote may well not be representative of how things are done on this side of the Atlantic, but I suspect that it's not far off.
Recently I had my first experience of ER (A&E) in the United States. Healthcare over here is far from perfect, even though the standard of care
can be excellent. Even with health insurance, a patient can be left with significant 'out-of-pocket' expense through deductibles (excesses) and, to a lesser extent, through co-pays.
Last month, my wife was taken to a local ER and was admitted overnight for various tests - fortunately everything checked out OK. When I arrived at the ER, I needed to make a few calls. I asked the medical staff if there was somewhere that I could use my cellphone (mobile), expecting to be directed outside. I received a somewhat surprised look and was duly informed that I could use my cellphone anywhere. I asked whether this extended to my wife's useage of a cellular phone at her bedside, nothwithstanding the fact that she was 'connected' to various monitoring devices and a few tubes, and once again, I was told that there was no restriction on the use of mobile telephones. Her primary care physician called the hospital and was put through to her bedside through a normal telephone handset next to the bed.
On admission to the hospital 'ward' (if that's the right term), the room contained two patients. Each patient had a bedside television and telephone handset, and as far as I could tell, there were no restrictions on outgoing calls - LD and local were both allowed. I did not try calling overseas. The television had basic cable with around fifty channels of choice. Ahain, there was absolutely no restriction on the use of cellular phones within the room, and many of the attending staff were using them, mainly to contact patient relatives, insurance companies and the like.
The down side is that a one night stay and ER admission was billed to the insurance company for around $6000, and given that I have stayed in worse hotels than this hospital, one can see why!
Patientline is a 100% scam, and only exists due to the ineffectiveness of the body that is supposed to REGULATE and not absolve itself from any responsibility by shunting the problem to some ofther misfit organization. Essentially, this is the way that Ofcom works; it will neither take ownership nor accept responsibility for the multitude of telephone-related scams that exist in the United Kingdom. The UK is by far the number one choice for telephone scammers simply because the two regulatory bodies are so utterly incompetent. One can draw one's own conclusions why these two boidies allow the continuance of such scams.
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NHS Patientline 49p per minute Ofcom Investigation (Read 542,823 times)
