Has Patientline ever tried lower prices for incoming calls?
yes but it didn't make any real difference to the volume received

From your comments can I take it that you presently work for Patientline,  even if not in a management capacity?
or even in one perhaps 

Which only goes to show that callers are in an abnormal stressed situation where they cannot make rational choices about price because their relatives are frequently about to undergo general anaesthetic surgery that might just end their lives.  Thus callers have to balance spending say £15 or £20 on a 30 or 40 minute call using your disgusting system against this being possibly the last conversation with the patient called they may ever had.  The fact that demand is inelastic to price level makes charging such a high and exploitative price all the more unacceptable in my view.

Of course it's exploitative, but every business charges the max it can get away with, it just isn't as noticable elsewhere in life.  Who's really to blame - the company for doing it, or the government for letting them?  A company is not a person, it's a profit making entity which makes all decision based on profit.  That said, Patientline has not made any profit, due to being a spectacularly badly managed business.

It couldn't happen to a nicer bunch of people is all I can say.  The thought of Derrick Lewis having to now slum it on a cheap package holiday during his retirement is not going to break my heart.  The only pity is that no one from Patientline is going to go to prison at one of Mr Lewis's former charges for their protracted and repeated disgarceful abuses of sick hospital patients.

Lewis left almost 2 years ago, so I doubt he cares very much.

It particularly isn't acceptable because patients don't have a choice of incoming call supplier and are artificially prevented from using mobile phones in NHS wards based on spurious and untrue claims it is clinically unsafe when the reality is Patientline management and senior NHS execs colluding in this monstrous lie to try to prevent lousy Patientline going bust.

This is enforced virtually nowhere now, and no one has challenged it partly because the legal argument would be very shakey, and partly because by the time it comes to fruition we will have long since collapsed.

Of course it is overtly the government's fault.  They should have only entered a contract giving them restrictions on maximum call prices and no one in their right mind in government should have agreed to more than 10p per minute.  But Patientline must have spectacularly inept political judgement if it did not realise charging 49p per minute for incoming calls would hole its repuation below the waterline.  Not to mention paying for 2 minutes before you are even connected

Difficult to disagree with that really.

As you say the company is pathetically managed and costs are out of control.  The bedside terminals should never have been anywhere near as expensive to buy or maintain.


Yes, and too many were installed, and a huge amount of money was wasted maintaining sets which made no profit (less than 1 in 5 patients use their unit, since most are in ridiculous wards like geriatric or stroke units).  A sensible plan would have been to install in maternity/medical/surgery/cancer wards which would have seen good usage, and not needed to be priced so highly - what actually happened was they were put everywhere at massive expense, and these areas had to subsidise the rest.  Usage on a maternity ward is approx. 200 times higher than eldery care for example.  It was done on the assumption that they would be used as high-tech medical aids for showing xrays and the like, but this should have been put in writing first, because in the end virtually none have been, and there was never any way to recoup this investment from TV and phone calls.  It was quite incredibly badly managed, and since then the operation has been very inefficient indeed.  It takes real effort to destroy a company which runs at 95% margin - you have to waste a heck of a lot of cash.

Mobile phones should not be banned in hospital and with mobile internet beginning to become affordable via mobile phones in some cases this then this does away with any need for Patientline at all.  As to the television side so long as the system is based on FTA channels then with the price of monitors these days patients shouldn't need to pay more than £5 per week to fund a profitable system.  Or they could bring in their own small portable handheld Freeview tvs.

Phones aren't banned any more in reality, only technically.  Our monitors cost about £1200 each but have no resale value. They aren't easy to remove either, so they will need to be used for something unless the NHS can find the huge amount of money needed to take them out after we call it a day.  I think what will happen is a company with an existing business will run them at break-even or a small loss, to cross-promote it's other products.  It will be a strong, trusted brand.

What about shares though?  Or did he sell all of those long ago too realising the writing was on the wall for Patientline?

Who knows? You can buy every share in existence today for less than the price of a modest detached home, and they get cheaper every day.

It's quite an easy place to work, and can be enjoyable.  Simple as that!

werdies wrote on Nov 30^th, 2007 at 7:15am:

I think running a trial of a lower tariff provides a very poor indication of what would be the effect if applied UK wide, because most of the potential callers to the very small number of trial sites are more likely to be aware of the standard Patientline tariff rather than the lower trial price.

Presumably the trial of increasing the cost of outgoing calls to 26p/minute, 40p minimum, showed that revenue would increase.

And the trial of charging £1 for headphones reportedly resulted in an increase in demand for them, whereas since the charge for headphones was introduced at my local hospital, paid-for TV viewing hours have dropped by 30%.

werdies wrote on Dec 4^th, 2007 at 7:45pm:


Wasn't that the line employees at various notorious German prison camps during the Second World War took?  That is they didn't invent the rotten system and were only following orders?  OK you aren't killing anyone directly except that your company (and a company can never operate without people being prepared to work for it) might actually prevent the relatives of some sick patients speaking to them for the last time the night before they die in a major op because they are worried about spending £30 on a 60 minute phone call.  And of course none of us knows for sure who will die during an op and who won't

Quote:


But f*g customers all have a choice about consuming the product whereas people rarely have a choice either about being ill or being in a hospital where your rotten company's exploitative system is the only way to contact them.  That is the big difference surely?  I agree that top cigarette company marketing people who try to make a lethal killer in to a fashion accessory ought to have a lot of trouble with their consciences though.

Quote:


Self evidently.  No one with a strong moral position on its activities would ever work there unless they took a job as a BBC undercover reporter.

Quote:


Ok well thanks for that anyway.  You clearly substantially redeem yourself by being prepared to share with this forum so much of what is going on.  Do you have any clue what the new phone call price will be for incoming calls.  Wouldn't there be huge advantages to moving to 10p per minute 0871 combined with a big marketing campaign to promote that the service was now relatively affordable (if not exactly a bargain).

Anything using 07 and pence per minute advance price announcements is surely doomed to failure?

pw4 wrote on Dec 5^th, 2007 at 1:52pm:


It seems odd Patientline find it so difficult to take their own advice.

Is this a bit like Chief Constable of South Wales Mervyn Hughes who is content to wag his finger about everyone else speeding and has pushed for people to get 6 points fixed penalty tickets who are more than 20mph over the limit only to now be caught doing 30mph over a 60mph limit with an incredible 9 points already previously on his licence (incredible for the head traffic cop in the UK who's job, amongst other things, is surely supposed to be to set an example to motorists).  And this man is not only to remain as a Chief Constable but head traffic policeman in Britain.  Incredible or what!

In New Labour Britian it seems to be constantly a case of Do As I Say and not Do As I Do.

bill wrote on Dec 5^th, 2007 at 2:28pm:


If they practice what they preach he should also have been demoted from Chief Constable to at least a couple of ranks down.

Of course personally I believe the whole system is nonsense and that (a) failure to spend money on improving existing roads and not building more roads to handle increased traffic is the primary cause of death and injury on roads in the UK plus removing virtually all unmarked police patrol cars in favour of the blunt and pointless instrument of speed cams and (b) With drivers only now being allowed two offences of more than 20mph over the limit in 3 years many people who drive for a living could now easily find themselves deprived of their livelihood while not being unsafe drivers.

But despite my view on the nonsense of the current speeding purge I have no time for a Chief Constable like Mr Hughes who clearly doesn't practice what he preaches but being a careerist toady is clearly eager to utter whatever mindless New Labour propaganda (and a war on speeding motorists is New Labour originated policy rather than Police originated policy) he is asked too in the hope of further enhancing his career prospects.

If he isn't also demoted from being Chief Constable then it clearly says the Police think they are above abiding by the laws they are so keen to enforce on others.  The same phenonmenon as we saw with Met police officers being able to gun down poor Mr de Menezes and then those officer not even being deprived of the right to work with firearms for the rest of their police careers (never mind charged with manslaughter which may or may not have been the right thing to do).  It doesn't seem much to ask when their reckless actions actually caused poor Mr de Menezes to lose his life.