Quotations from NEG "Surgery
Line"
Case Studies
Many of those who have adopted Surgery Line may have done so on the assumption that the money to pay NEG for it comes out of thin air, rather than from patients.
The 8 "case studies" currently published on the NEG website indicate significant benefits provided by the Surgery Line system. Those with a weak digestive system may suffer discomfort when reading some of the quotes from practice staff.
Apart from the financial benefit to the practice that is achieved by the system being paid for in some part by patients, all these benefits could have been achieved if it had been paid for "properly", i.e. connected to numbers that do not attract the premium charge that provides the revenue share, thereby not paid for by patients.
Links to the specific documents are found in the heading above the relevant quotations. I provide my personal commentary in italics.
These quotations are highly selective. They completely ignore the many benefits offered by Surgery Line, because this is not the point at issue. The point being addressed is simply the improper way in which the system is funded.
“… self-fund a state of the art phone system" explains NEG’s CEO, Richard Chapman
The first question to
ask about a "self-funding" business proposition is "where does
the money actually come from". In this case it is the patient.
With your own 084 number, you keep about 2p from every call to re-invest in your practice
The 2p (or whatever greater sum is actually received) is remuneration received from patients, a breach of the terms of the GMS contract. The re-investment referred to is not "profit", but payments to NEG to cover the cost of the telephone system.
Calls to 084 or ‘lo-call’ numbers cost patients 4p per minute, the same as the first minute of BT’s standard call rate between 6am and 6pm.
This figure of 4p per
minute is incorrect or out-of-date. The significant point is that calls to the
0844 numbers used are invariably more expensive for callers, because the money
for the revenue share has to come from somewhere!
the cost of calls from mobiles remains unchanged - these account for around 30% of all calls to surgeries
Mobile tariffs have
higher charge rates for non-geographic numbers. Many mobile tariffs feature
inclusive calls to geographic landline numbers, giving an effective additional
cost of up to 35p per minute to call a 0844 number.
"I’ve met a number of practice managers who think that Surgery Line sounds almost too good to be true," says Chapman
Yes Mr Chapman, common
advice to those who wish to avoid being scammed is that if something sounds too
good to be true, then it probably is.
These quotations are highly selective. They completely ignore the many benefits offered by Surgery Line, because that is not the point at issue. The point being addressed is simply the improper way in which the system is funded.
There have been a few patients who have complained about the change in the number. The amount of complaints received has been minimal however - only 24 complaints out of a patient base of 8,150, representing less than 0.3% of the total patients.
One is left wondering
if 99.7% of the patients are aware that they are paying for the new system.
"Patients appreciate not having to wait or be put on hold, although some have been influenced by media reports about the cost of calls." However, with the new 0844 option charged at the same rate as BT’s standard call rate, this is no longer an issue
No patients in
NEG were able to install the system relatively quickly: within 4 weeks it was up and running, just in time for Christmas … We were getting a modern system for no capital outlay
Getting something for nothing may be a little worrying at other times of the year, but NEG personnel obviously had white beards and were wearing red coats.
The Lodge Surgery’s top five reasons for going ahead with Surgery Line: 1. No financial outlay
Oh dear! One wonders
if there could be a particular reason why this practice believes that you can
get something for nothing.
Popular as a retirement location as well as a holiday destination, the population of Ryde has a higher proportion of elderly residents than the national average.
The Esplanade’s Top 5 Reasons for choosing Surgery Line … 3. A partially self funded system
Given the fact that
many elderly people are exempted from the charges that are properly made for
some NHS services (i.e. prescriptions and dentistry), it is of particular
concern that they should suffer from the improper imposition of charges that
makes Surgery Line self-funded.
We used to have the occasional patient who was concerned about the call charges, but we produced an information sheet explaining the costs and reasons for implementing the system
It is disappointing to
learn that the surgery no longer "has" these patients. The
"information sheet" was presumably honest and caused them to register
with a surgery that did not charge for its NHS services.
We were unsure about how the patients would react to the new system, but were convinced by the efficient handsets, the call logging facility and the price benefits of getting an up to date system for a significantly reduced cost.
One suspects that
patients were not told that they would be paying for the system, even though
the cost was "significantly reduced" from what they might have had to
pay for some alternative, with less efficient handsets and no call logging
facility. Patients should not have to balance the benefits of these features
against what they pay for them. NHS services should be delivered free of charge
to patients.
Our experiences of working with NEG and the Surgery Line system have been good. It wasn’t the company’s fault, but we did have some initial problems with patients’ complaints which were time consuming to deal with
It is of no surprise
that problems were caused by complaints from those who started to discover that
they were paying for the system, rather than those who were profiting from it!
It can indeed be time consuming for an organisation genuinely committed to
serving patients to construct and deliver the fictions necessary to deceive
them.
some disquiet from the patients who had the false impression that the doctors were profiting from the system
This is the clever trick.
Because the profit is made by NEG rather than the practice, which simply uses
its income to cover costs, patients can be convinced that it is acceptable for
them to pay for NHS services.
Kingshurst Medical Practice finds that Surgery Line pays for itself
Yes - that means that
patients pay for it.