Bedside phone enquiry likely to raise wider issues

The chief executive of hospital bedside telephone and television supplier, Patientline, has predicted that a regulatory investigation into its business will raise ‘interesting questions’ about hospital charges not only for phone calls but also for other services.

In a briefing reported in the Financial Times, Patientline chief executive, Derek Lewis, hints that more profound issues than phone charges have been raised by an investigation announced last year by telecommunications watchdog, Ofcom.

When the investigation was launched, headlines suggested that charges of 39p-49p per minute levied on incoming calls to patients were the main issue, but Lewis points out that few complaints have actually been received by Ofcom.

The FT article suggests that Ofcom, which is due to report by the end of January, is looking at whether Patientline and its customers in the NHS trusts are “abusing a dominant position” under competition law.

This raises the question of whether trusts, when they contract with providers such as Patientline, are acting as commercial undertakings rather than public service providers.

The article reports: “A decision that trusts are commercial undertakings could open a far wider range of services to private sector competition. Even if the answer goes the other way, a ruling that the charges are high because they and Patientline and Premier [the other NHS bedside phone provider] are exploiting a monopoly position still has implications for other public/private partnerships.”

It cites the example of hospital car parking charges as another similar area where fees – some of which have attracted complaints – are a key component of PFI deals.

The Patientline model for delivering its service involves no initial cost to the NHS. The company installs the bedside terminals at a cost of around £1m per hospital and creates revenue from charges to patients, incoming callers and from hospitals themselves when they use services such as bedside access to patient records, menu planning and patient feedback questionnaires.

So far, very few hospitals have taken advantage of such services delivered through connections that Patientline sees as ready-made broadband at every bed. The company has failed to make a profit so far but recent results reported encouraging sales overseas where different business models are used.

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