| HOSPITAL RIP OFF CONTINUES |
| Friday, 13 April 2007 | |
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After car parking charges rocketed to £3 - call charges via Patientline have jumped to 160 %. Outgoing calls go to incoming calls to a maximum of 49p, incoming calls to 26p. Local MP John Pugh has condemned these moves calling for hospitals to do an audit of pateients hidden costs. He says: "The NHS seems to be needlessly adding to the cost of being ill for patients and their families without offering anything that looks like a satisfactory explanation. This is coupled too with a strategy of banning mobile phones and closing down communal TV rooms. Safety fears about mobile phones interfering with medical technology appear in most wards to be groundless and getting rid of the ward TV mean spirited but that is what has been happening. "Despite all this the firm that provide the bedside Patientline claim they are out of pocket and not making profit. I would be interested to know how badly off the Directors of these firms are." "Quite apart any loss of income the costs of travel simply parking, phoning and watching TV is adding to the individual cost of sickness to families with much of that money not even going back to the NHS." |