I just received this from my daughter whose partner's parents are both in a hospital in the South of England they were admitted yesterday ,both after falls at home

"Listen to this, nobody can visit the Hospital at moment because they have got the nora virus there.
So we tried to phone up to speak to Dad but apparently you cant do that any more.
You have to phone a national number and then they ask what hospital and ward, and then they try and sell you a package of free TV for 5 days, and free phone calls out ( Dad is deaf!) but not in.


So basically these two old people in their mid 80s have been in there with no contact with each other and no visitors, and nobody can phone them unless they buy all that!

Bit different to Greece I think..."


I have edited out personal details including the name of the hospital.

Cheapest method we found was skype from here to your relatives mobile, obviously if they don’t have one, another relative needs to loan them one.

I agree that the 'Patient Line' is a complete b**lls up, we where told by the nurses on the ward that they had to get rid of their mobile handsets because it was taking too much of their time taking it to patients who could'nt or would'nt fork out £5/day for the use of the phone & tv, not to mention the exorbitant charges for anyone ringing in. The nurses also said it was actually more to do with Patient Line complaining about the practice of nurses taking the mobile phones to patients and disrupting their business model!

Patient Line fortunately will be unable to ban mobiles as all the doctors have them & I know what their answer would be!

My father-in-law had to wheel himself to the nursing station so he could use the fixed line...

They could certainly learn from the Greeks, each 3 bedded ward has a phone, you give the number out and they can phone in, simple as that

http://www.mirror.co.uk/news/technology-science/patients-boycott-hospital-tv-and...

http://www.which.co.uk/news/2011/06/hospital-tv-and-phones-expensive-and-confusi...