Dear Ms. Green,
Further to your report about the failure of the SurgeryLine telephone system at Stamford, Billingborough and Rippingale NHS GPs' surgeries (
http://www.stamfordtoday.co.uk/news?articleid=3116459) I thought you might be interested to hear a little more about the SurgeryLine system and how it is ripping off NHS patients throughout the country.
NEG, the suppliers of SurgeryLine systems, use a sales technique of offering GPs' practices incentives of a 'free' switchboard and associated equipment and a proportion of the excessive 5p per minute call charges (not the 3.7p per minute the company told your reporter) which result when non-geographical 0844 numbers replace existing 01 or 02 geographic numbers. NEG have the temerity to say the call charges are less than 5p per minute - but, deviously, they quote without VAT. How many patients get VAT-free telephone bills? In any case, with VAT, the 3.7p your reporter was told the calls cost is 4.35p - so that figure is demonstrably false.
Of course, common sense tells us that no business would offer free equipment unless they were certain of recouping their money - and more - so the question has to be asked, how are they going to do that? Simple, patients are going to pay! All patients - from the wealthy to the poor - are going to pay. Every time they call the surgery, they are going to pay.
Apart from the fact that such systems require patients to remember an eleven-digit number as opposed to a much shorter local number, 0844 numbers are 'revenue-sharing' and generate an income for the surgery and/or the telephone service provider and result in call-queuing - at the expense of patients!
The firm attempts to justify the unnecessary queuing which results when these systems are installed by saying that it is more efficient - because callers never receive the engaged tone! They cannot, of course, explain how patients entering an electronic wilderness to wait, whilst paying 5p per minute to do so, is more efficient than, as they would do now, them just pressing the last number redial button to try again.
When only one or two people are available to answer calls anyway, such systems really just make patients pay yet another stealth tax for the dubious privilege of listening to ‘press this’, ‘press that’ menu options and/or ‘musak’ whilst waiting. The real truth behind the 'better service to patients' and 'efficient use of modern technology' rhetoric is simply that the systems are more efficient
at extracting extra money from patients!
Equally worryingly, it is not possible to make calls to UK 08xx numbers from most overseas countries and, therefore, a patient or hospital overseas would not be able to contact the surgery for information in case of emergency.
Many people have 'inclusive' telephone call packages these days whereby all calls to UK 01 or 02 numbers are, in effect, free at all times. At 5p per minute and with queuing times artificially lengthened, calls to 0844 numbers from patients attempting just to make an appointment or enquire about a test result, now regularly cost in excess of 50p.
Of course, the introduction of these numbers additionally penalises the poor and elderly and others who do not have access to a home phone. Calls to 0844 numbers from telephone boxes cost a minimum of 40p and are charged at 14p per minute and mobile phones companies charge up to 40p per minute - not the 'headline' price of 5p (which, in itself, is 54% per minute more than someone on the basic BT package would pay for a call to an 01 or 02 number).
You will probably be aware that a petition (
http://petitions.pm.gov.uk/NGN-use-by-GPs/) against the use of these numbers by GPs’ surgeries has been started on the Downing Street website and has already attracted a considerable number of signatures.
Pity the people registered with the Stamford, Billingborough and Rippingale surgeries - and any others where these rip-off and reprehensible systems have been installed.
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