http://www.timesandstar.co.uk/news/viewarticle.aspx?id=487010

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BEDSIDE phone calls for patients at the West Cumberland Hospital in Whitehaven and Carlisle’s Cumberland Infirmary will not rise, despite national plans to increase costs.

Health chiefs have pledged they will not put up the price of outgoing calls at the infirmaries after Patientline, a private firm providing bedside phone services for hospitals nationally revealed it planned to put up costs from 10p a minute to 26p.

North Cumbria Acute Hospitals NHS Trust, which runs the hospitals, urged Patientline to discuss the matter with it directly.

Patientline and the trust have issued a joint statement.

It said: “Patientline services at the Cumberland Infirmary and the West Cumberland Hospital will not be subject to any price increases.

“Charges for the television facilities will remain at £3.50 a day with concessions for the over 65s and long-term users. Telephone charges remain the same.

“For incoming calls, off-peak, the charge remains at 39p a minute.

“For all outgoing calls, the charge will remain at the same rate – 10p a minute.”

The decision was described as “very good news” by the Patient and Public Involvement Forum (PPIF) for the two hospitals.

Patientline is reported as saying it had invested £160 million in the system and the price rise was needed to recoup its costs and make a profit.
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There is an excellent article in todays Daily Mail about rip-off Patientline

This is indeed, one sick (in at least two meanings of the word) company, and the sooner it goes bankrupt the better. Surely it must be in its final throes of collapse.

PTL share price Feb 13, 2004 = 162.00p
PTL share price June 5, 2007 = 3.18p

It needs to be put out of its misery, and should have been 'strangled at birth'.

http://www.thisislondon.co.uk/news/article-23399378-details/Bedside%20robbery%20...

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When Justin Greenbank's wife Jacinth was in hospital, he visited her every day.

Jacinth, 26, seriously ill with cystic fibrosis, was transferred to intensive care where she died after three weeks.

Throughout this harrowing time, when he was not at his wife's bedside, Justin spoke to her on the phone.

"Though I kept the calls to just five minutes a day, at 29p a minute I was forced to keep conversations short," says the 26-year-old salesman.

"It sounds trivial, but the money was a huge, added strain." Over the 21 days his wife was in hospital, the cost of their phone bills was a staggering £200.

[...]

Retired civil servant Kevin Ryan, whose wife Hilda is a patient at James Cook Hospital, Middlesbrough, estimates that in three weeks he has spent £102.90 on telephone calls alone.

"We're pensioners and it's a lot of money for us," says Kevin, 64. "I spend as much time at the hospital as I can and call her every morning and evening.

"But it costs so much I'm always aware of the clock ticking, which isn't how it should be. Last time she was in hospital, my phone bill jumped up by about £40 a week.

[...]

Charlotte Brown, commercial director of Patientline claims the average patient spends a mere £10 on its services, and she believes the company offers a genuine choice.

She says: "You can't expect a private company to offer services for free. We're not a charity.

"We are trying to find ways of reducing charges to patients - although I don't believe they're outrageous.'

[...]

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idb wrote on Jun 5^th, 2007 at 9:31pm:

But in the 'hip', 'edgy', 'dynamic', 'we don't do bland' parlance of 21st Century rip-off Britain, Patientline does offer a genuine choice - pay their extortionate prices .............. or don't.

NGM'sG,

I note that you have omitted Blair and Brown from that list of those who had "Charlotte Brown equivalents to tell the populace that all was well and that everyone loved the regime"? Is there any particular reason for that, since the policy of or inaction of Blair particularly is ultimately directly responsible for the fact that the Patientline scam targeted at the sick and dying, and particularly those in these categories who are old and frail, and cannot get outside a hospital to use a mobile, is allowed to continue and escalate. It is after all Blair and Brown who sustain the position of Charlotte Brown with their policy of condoning the scams?

I firmly believe that if you look at the gradual clandestine erosion of personal freedom in this country over the last 12 years or so it is Blair and Brown that are predominantly responsible, and have deliberate policies and intent to achieve this and much more not yet implemented! Only in retrospect will most in the UK wake up to what has happened when it is too late, just as occurred in Nazi Germany!

jimjim wrote on Jun 25^th, 2007 at 6:45pm:


I could never ever feel sorry for these -.

Two months ago I got a call from my mother who had just gone back to the hospital fracture clinic as an Outpatient a week after she fell and broke her wrist.  She told me they were not happy with how her arm was healing in plaster and said they had a bed and surgeon available (a cancellation somewhere of a previously planned op had happened) and wanted to operate on her under general anaesthetic in an hour or so's time.  She wanted to know what she should do as she had never had a general anaeasthetic op and the NHS procedure involved wires coming out through her wrist for several weeks with all the obvious risks of an MSRA infection developing etc (the procedure looked gruesome on Google).  It was a real dilemma as she also has private medical insurance but subject to a high maximum excess of £2,500 (which almost any general anaesthetic op in a private hospital would consume most of).

I made some calls to the ward sister to ask what was going on and asked if I could speak to her again and was given the Patientline number for her bedside phone.  When I said I objected in principle to these numbers as a form of extortion and was there another way to speak to her they said they could wheel out the old ward phone but I was made to feel like the meanest most uncaring son ever.  I was about to weaken and shell out £30 to Patientline when my mum managed to call me on her mobile from somewhere out of view of the hospital Gestapo.  In the end after discussing it further she left the hospital soon afterwards and had the operation done privately at the Wellington hospital a few days later using a procedure with a titanium metal joint that does not involve having infection giving wires through her wrist for weeks on end.

Patientline is an utterly disgusting racketeering company because people are put off calling their relatives for an hour the night before they have a potentially life or death operation (as any general anaesthetic operation is to some extent) or they give in and pay £30 or more for a one hour call.

This is quite blatant racketeering and grotesque blackmail of the very worst kind and yet still this disgraceful government and OfcoN allows it to continue.  Totally and utterly unbelievable and utterly disgraceful.

The sooner this bunch of shysters goes bust and the assets of the bankrupt company can then be refinanced on a different basis with much lower call costs then the better as far as I am concerned.

Personally I think Mr Derek Lewis ought to be locked up in one of the prisons he used to run for this quite blatant form of extortion of the sick and elderly and their relatives.