Quote:
No chance of that.  They've all just started their 80 day summer holiday.

Quote:


A voice of reason!

I was recently admitted as an emergency to an NHS Hospital that had the Patientline service. The all in one unit is mounted on a flexible arm that can be swung out the way. It has a medium sized LCD TV with a number of channels including Sky News and a built in phone. In the future internet access will be added.

On arrival in the ward I went through the sign-up process. I put about £10 of credit on my account. Contrary to what has been written on this thread you do not get an individual Personal Number but an "account number" that is entered after dialling the 07 number. I assume they will recycle the numbers over time.

Outgoing calls were 10p per minute which I considered quite reasonable considering how much calls from hotels or private hospitals cost.

It is possible to listen to the speakers but in the interest of harmony it is better to use the headphones provided. These are replaced by the Patientline rep before the next patient occupies the bed.

The Patientline offering is WAY better than what was available previously - communal TV in a communal lounge or a payphone brought to your bed. For those not willing to pay for Patienline those facilities are still available.

The cost of providing the service must be high. Each unit must cost several hundred ££££. Then there is the maintenance and running costs.

There are too many people here who want something for nothing. Do those people think that the NHS should divert money from healthcare areas to install a Patientline type system and allow it to be used for free?

No one is forcing people to use Patienline. It is there for those willing and able to pay for it.

Quote:


Can I assume you are Operations Director of Patientline?  At least I can only imagine someone with that job and personality type being gung ho enough to use Operations Director as their forum name.

To answer your question I do not expect the main funding of this system to be paid for by elderly relatives of hospital patients who have no choice on what means their relative engages for communication in hospital and who have to pay a pound a minute from a BT Payphone for call.  I am all for private enterprise so long as it operates in an open free and competitive market.  But there all too many commercial companies in the UK today who expect to stitch up cosy little anti competitive commercial deals where they have a monopoly.

If you make the case that the NHS cannot afford to provide this entertainment and communication service there is only one fair way to provide it.  That is for the patient to pay a fixed amount a day for the whole unit to be activated including the phone and the television.  But the incoming calls should be at normal BT 01 and 02 prices so that impoverished elderly relatives are not prevented from calling and so that overseas relatives in the USA are not barred from calling altogether.

I would also like to see the bar on mobile phone use lifted in hospitals so that your service is open to a little competition.  As mobile phone line quality is lousy if your service is really as good as you say it is then people will still want to use it.

Most disgraceful on this system is that outgoing calls are 10p per minute but incoming are 49p per minute from a BT landline.  If you wanted to earn a revenue share fairly then under the current rules you should have used 0871 at 10p per minute.  Criticisable but quite legal under present Ofcom rules.

07 PNS is for Personal numbers that reach the individual directly on that number by landline forwarding.  In the case of the BT k rate that you currently use that includes forwarding the calls to overseas mobiles, many of which still have quite expensive call rates.

However Patientline is scamming by abusing 07 k rate PNS numbers and must expect to face the appropriate commercial music as a result.  The NHS directors who agreed to this should grotesque error should also be fired.

NonGeographicalMan please calm down!

Patientline was the company that provided a system with the lowest costs. 01 or 02 numbers could not be used as the system is similar to VoIP (but using different protocols) and there are no geographic alternatives.

The NHS had no cheaper competitors to consider and therefore the directors will face no action - if you want a cheaper phone system, start a company and offer your services! The NHS would accept a more competitative tender because it would increase patient satisfaction!

You cannot and will not be allowed to use a mobile phone in a hospital.

Mobile phones emit considerable amounts of electromagnetic radiation (even when on standby) due to the basic processes they use to communicate with network base stations. This electromagnetic radiation has three effects in a hospital:
1) Interferes with and delays the paging system used in all hospitals to call doctors to immediate emergencies such as cardiac arrests;
2) Disrupts the sensors attached to patients (e.g. the ECG dots measure electrical activity in the body are proven to give false readings if a mobile phone *EVEN ON STANDBY* is closer than twenty-two metres). This could lead to mis-diagnosis if the results are recorded.
3) Creates noise pollution - how can you speak to a doctor for the 2-3 minutes you get if your (or anybody else in the ward!) phone is ringing?! The point of being in hospital is to recover - not carry on your work and day-to-day life! Hospitals aren't designed to provide entertainment and communication - they are not a cinema or an internet café!

Additionally, there are hundreds of day and residential patients in a hospital - if mobile phone usage was allowed the hospital would require a whole new base station in order to handle all of the users at once! Do we not campaign against all new base stations now? Especially around schools and hospitals? But yet we buy more & more mobile phones!

There was a study about six months ago which challenged these opinions, but it was discredited by other research. Mobile phones in a hospital are a no-no.

In summary, if you want to save people money on making calls to patients offer your own services - the NHS had no other options to consider. If they didn't accept Patientline, patients would have had no telephone and no TV at their bedsides!


Figures that made me think:
*A brand new state-if-the-art operating theatre costs about £200,000 and can be used for 3000+ operations a year; but just 1000 failed asylum seekers and their families cost us £30million in legal bills during their 1st, 2nd, 3rd, 4th and 5th appeals last year.

Quote:

A really simple test to show the effect a mobile phone has on equipment is to hold your phone near a Hi-Fi speaker or at the side of a traditional (Cathode-Ray Tube) TV during a call. The noises and picture disturbance are due to the intense radiation emitted - as patient monitoring equipment is a lot more sensitive and advanced than a speaker, the effects are much more pronounced. That's why phones have to have a power rating on the outside of the box now (W/m2) - so that you don't give your growing child something which creates a brain tumour in later life.

Quote:
Rubbish! Patientline chose the most lucrative numbering scheme that it could get away with in avoiding any regulatory activity. It would have preferred to use 09 but couldn't. There is *no* technical reason why it could not deliver these services on 01, 02, 0800, 0844, 0871, in fact virtually any numbering scheme could deliver the call. Patientline chose 07 so it could get high yield. One would hope Ofcom will stop the scam, but it's unlikely. Just tinker at the edges so it seems Ofcom has done something.

Quote:


lol, you seem to think that everybody is working for Patientline or an NHS director! Just like the other people you have accused, no I am not!

It appears that you haven't looked at the way the system works.
The number given to patients is allocated to an individual patient (not a bed, not a hospital). The number is given at registration and if a patient is moved to another ward or hospital the number can theoretically move with them too. This means the number is a personal number that redirects the calls to which bed the patient is now in. As noted previously VoIP is not used, it is a patented proprietory system with increased capacity and reliability (designed by the same company that connects UK ATM machines to the banks).

The system that directs the numbers is based outside of the hospital (nothing to do with the health service at all) and there are only four lines between Patientline & each hospital - Calls In, Calls Out, TV and System Feed.

It does not matter what Patientline charge - they are the cheapest that were willing to provide the service! If you would like to provide cheaper calls to patients you need to either argue directly with Patientline or set up your own company!