Phoning Patients In Hospital

Smag

Does anyone know if there is a way round the discraceful call charges when phoning a reative in hospital?

My Mother is in Oldham Royal at the moment and the telephone system is called Patientline.

Any help would be greatly appreciated

Thanks

Noozan

I don't have any useful suggestions but just wanted to say that my mother had a recent stay in hospital too and patient line charges 49p per min peak and 39p off peak - it's disgraceful. I had no choice but to use it as I was 600 miles away at the time. They used to have a trolley phone that they pushed to the patients bedside if you wanted to call someone who couldn't get to the day room and that was just an ordinary call rate.

Another sign of rip off Britain.....

Woby_Tide

when calling patientline numbers i.e 07****use 1899 or the cable equivalent number and the calls are 15p per minute I think. I used it when my wife was in maternity unit a few months back. Still costly when you have to listen to 2 minutes of rubbish before your call is connected but better than 40 odd pence per minute

trafalgar_2

Smag wrote:

Does anyone know if there is a way round the discraceful call charges when phoning a reative in hospital?

My Mother is in Oldham Royal at the moment and the telephone system is called Patientline.

Any help would be greatly appreciated

Thanks

sorry can't help with getting round it but my daughter was in that hospital last week and it drove me nuts as you have to listen to 1 minute of speil every time and sometimes just to find out it's engaged or there is no answer:rolleyes:

Smag

It completely does my brains in waiting on while listening to the rubbish.

Wouldn't be so bad if you were connected straight away

I dont think 1899 works - I tried and was unable to coonect through it.

Thanks for the replies - Good to know everyone seems to be p....sed off with Patientline

Maybe it calls for Martin to investigate on our behalf!

barjam_2

i also queried this in a previous post , 1899 and 18866 dont work they tell you charges to personal no.s but when you try to ring thru them it says i'm sorry etc.... i bet is patientline who has put the block on it :mad:

i found it cheaper for me to supply my mother with the payment cards and got her to ring me

Edinburghlass_2

Thanks for that barjam, I did a search for a previous thread as I knew this had come up before but I couldn't find the thread

bbb_uk

Edinburghlass wrote:

Thanks for that barjam, I did a search for a previous thread as I knew this had come up before but I couldn't find the thread

Can you search for anything. I've just tried searching for 'OneTel' for another thread but couldn't find any results. No matter what I search for it comes back with nothing found. Is this just me?

Edinburghlass_2

Sometimes the search works great other times it doesn't

I think sra has some tips in his site A-Z on the best ways of using the facility but I tried patientline and patients phoning from hospital and only got this thread coming up.

And no, its not just you!

Heinz

bbb_uk wrote:

Can you search for anything. I've just tried searching for 'OneTel' for another thread but couldn't find any results. No matter what I search for it comes back with nothing found. Is this just me?

Use lower case (I just searched for 'onetel' and got results - including this thread).

I tried again searching for 'patientline' and also got results - in that case, THESE RESULTS.

Woby_Tide

I definitely was able to use 18866(using the NTL 0808 number rather than 18866 itself), maybe try that way(FTR 1899 is cheaper than 18866 if only I had known back then)

27-11-200422:05:470808-004470462101640:02:23 0.4867
29-11-200422:17:450808-004470462130530:01:21 0.2800
01-12-200418:07:200808-004470462130530:02:07 0.4333

Those are Patientline numbers at Poole and Bournemouth hospitals

Number for 1899 is 0808 1 708 708

If you're only registered with 18866 it's 0808 1 701 701 but still only 20p per min