Press Release

Hospital Telephones – Con or Convenience? - New campaign tells patients – “It’s your call!”

04 April 2006

A nationwide campaign entitled ‘Fair Talk’ is launched today to discover the views of patients and visitors about hospital bedside television and telephone services. The campaign, undertaken by Patient and Public Involvement (PPI) Forums across England, will for the first time give consumers of these services the opportunity to voice their opinions and concerns.

The Forums, which represent patients and the public in decisions about health, decided action needed to be taken after receiving a deluge of complaints from patients and their visitors on the cost of services provided by companies such as Patientline, Hospicom and Premier.

The Forums will conduct surveys throughout hospitals in England to discover the true cost and quality of these services and to establish if patients and the public’s best interests are being served. Additionally the Forums will also investigate whether hospitals allow patients the choice of using their mobile phone in certain areas of the hospital.

The launch of the Fair Talk Campaign comes on the back of months of concerns over hospital bedside television and telephone services. These include:

• Ofcom investigating the price of making telephone calls to hospital patients and refering the issue to the Department of Health
  
• Department of Health announcing the creation of a Review Group into the price of Hospital telephone charges
  
• Today, Chairman of Patientline, Derek Lewis steps down from role to be replaced by iSoft's Deputy Chairman, Geoff White
  
• Patientline is holding an Extraordinary General Meeting on Thursday, citing  a  “loss of customer confidence in the service’s value for money and quality’

The Forums will use the findings of the survey to feedback the views of patients and their families to the Department of Health’s Review.

Steve Lowden, Chief Executive of the Commission for Patient and Public Involvement in Health (CPPIH) commented:

“PPI Forums have received many complaints from members of the public, who are telling them that they simply cannot afford the telephone charges that private companies have set. Many feel that these charges are exploiting the most vulnerable and placing real hardship on patients, their families and friends. Forums will also be investigating whether there is real patient choice – the opportunity to use personal mobile phones, which have been proved to have no detrimental effect on medical equipment. Forums are joining forces to ensure members of the public have a real say into what they think of hospital telephone charges”.