National rate NHS phone numbers to be banned by April

Tags: AIM BMA booking DH GP GPs Out-of-hours

24 Feb 2005

The Department of Health has today confirmed that they will prevent GPs, local surgeries and dentists from using national (0870 or 0871) or premium rate lines and they will expect these to be replaced by 'lo-call' rate numbers by April, with payments of £500 per practice on offer to cover lost revenue.

According to DH figures, 290 GP practices have numbers that charge up to 7.5p a minute, mainly used for appointment booking and repeat prescriptions.

Health minister John Hutton said: ""Sick people and their families should not be asked to pay over the odds to contact local NHS services. The use of premium and national rate telephone numbers is an unfair additional cost for many NHS patients. That is why we are taking this action today."

One advantage of using the numbers is that it gives patients one single point of contact that doesn't change if the organisations move. However, practices and surgeries will now be asked to move to 0844 or 0845 numbers. The bar will be enforced through revised contracts for GPs and directions to NHS trust.

The ban will also apply to NHS dentists and NHS opticians, as well as out-of-hours services. It will not, however, apply to pharmacists.

Michael Summers, chairman of The Patients Association, said: "The Patients Association welcomes this announcement. Many patients were contacting us as calls were so expensive, particularly when surgeries were busy or engaged. This decision will be welcomed by patients generally."

In a statement, the BMA said they broadly agreed with the ban on national-rate numbers, but "by introducing 0870 telephone systems, practices will have benefited from improved equipment installed with the aim of ensuring patients were able to get through to the practice quickly, deliver their message or request speedily, and in general spend less time on the telephone than with previous systems."

Reader's Comments

What about parking charges

spbridge@yahoo.com

24 Feb 05 19:02

Maybe this should be applied to parking charges as well. I believe the charges to be around £1.20 per/hr in our region.

0845 is effectively premium rate still

dave@medicalconnections.co.uk

25 Feb 05 09:02

"lo-call" rate is to most people a mis-nomer, now that national and local call cost the same anyway. At best, 0845 and 0844 numbers will be charged the same as "standard" calls, and for the increasingly large number of people on "inclusive calls" tarifs (which of course exclude 0845 etc.) , these are STILL effectiovely premium rate calls!

Much cheaper now

25 Feb 05 09:02

So the cost of making an appointment may fall from 7p to 3p. Prescription charges are to stay at £6.40. An overall saving of over 0.6%. What a worthwhile measure (although practices will not have to downgrade their systems until after 5th of May, which is nice)

Whining

25 Feb 05 11:02

Do we have to shoot down every positive move?

I agree!

25 Feb 05 12:02

Yes come on! We have enough problems we should be moaning about but lets be positive about something. I give this the thumbs up! and also agree that we should get rid of all car parking charges in all NHS trusts. When you visit a ward or appointment just get given a token to get you out to cut out people using them as car parks.

Expensive phone calls

02 Mar 05 07:03

Presumably, I should not contact patients on their mobile phone numbers, which is a VERY expensive rate (according to the Archers Omnibus edition of 27 Feb).... or does prohibition of expensive calls only work in one direction

Typical

02 Mar 05 08:03

Such a typical GP response! And I must say very poor.

I am thinking that a person on minimum wage might struggle to phone his GP at 20 p or more a minute, whereas a GP that earns 80k a year might just be able to stretch to it.

How are calls etc funded

02 Mar 05 15:03

Could someone enlighten me on how the expenses of practices such as phone calls, letters, lighting etc for a surgury are funded?

Expensive phone calls

02 Mar 05 16:03

I'm sorry you feel that way. I'd add that it's NOT 20p per minute, but about 6.5p per minute. Calls are now dealt with in an average of 75 seconds in my practice, thanks to the quicker call handling. Cost is therefore about 7.5 - 8p in total, as opposed to the BT charge of about 6.5 -7 p but with a longer wait. There is no difference to the cost of the call if you ring from a mobile. And the grants that used to be available for installing expensive equipment are no longer available. Maybe the Dept of Health want me to provide a lousy service. Check their website though, I counted 44 references to 0870 numbers before this became an issue. And by the way, this kit costs me about £100 per month in maintenence costs, so I'm not a money-grabbing, profiteering GP, just someone who is trying to provide a second-class service from fourth class funding .

" with payments of £500 per practice on offer"?

03 Mar 05 13:03

Independent contractors? Can anyone think of any other sector where this would happen?

Expensive phone calls

03 Mar 05 14:03

Well, you may be right. However John Hutton the health minister said last April that "Practices have the right to install telephone systems that charge patients extra to call the surgery, like all other business" and "telephone costs had to be covered by overall practice income". No other industry is treated like a political football in this way, and I'm not sure why the surgeries who try and improve the service that they offer should be penalised like this. Patient surveys have highlighted that our old phone system was not good, and we are trying hard to respond to demand. A payment of £ 500 will cover the costs for 5 months, but I'm committed to a 7 year contract that my surgery have proceeded with, on the basis that what the health minister states can be relied upon. I may be naive in thinking that a politician will stick to his word when there is an election looming, but I hope that that is all that I'm guilty of.

0870 numbers are nothing to do with GP phone systems

04 Mar 05 08:03

As a designer of the BT DDSN network in 1985-87 on which the premium rate numbers are hosted the comments in this thread are way off the mark. One of the reasons for introducing this service was to make it easier for organisation to provide advanced telephony services WITHOUT having to purchase/lease in-house PBX/key systems. All the services work on a standard phone line as the intelligence is in the BT exchange. To read about GP surgeries saying they are using the service to subsidise their in-house systems is hypocritical to say the least! Free at the point of entry? Depends how long they keep you on hold.

Expensive phone calls

07 Mar 05 20:03

If that is the case, I would suggest that you tell BT's marketing department. We found them unhelpful - sorry to criticise, but there it is