Sharon has been spearheading a campaign to secure a better deal for hospital patients. All too often people in hospital have to pay through the nose just to use a telephone or park their car.
Car Parking
Sharon is campaigning to scrap extortionate car parking charges, particularly for cancer patients. The cost of cancer not only has a physical and emotional impact but also a financial one. Illness is never easy and it is wrong that hospitals try and profit from people who have to attend frequent and sometimes lengthy appointments for treatment. Sharon was delighted when the Labour Party pledged to scrap these charges, but this is another pledge that the Coalition has scrapped. The fight goes on.
Mobile Phones
Sharon was delighted when her campaign was successful and the government to end the blanket ban on mobile phones in hospitals. This move was widely welcomed and Sharon now wants to make sure that Primary Care Trusts take up the baton. This is increasingly important given the sharp 160% rise in the cost of bedside telephone systems provided by Patientline.
The following is an article by Sharon written to make the case for using mobile phones in hospitals:
Talk is cheap, or so the saying goes, yet I can’t help but feel that anyone who has known someone spend time in an NHS hospital over the last decade might have offered up a few choice words to the contrary.
The cost of communicating from the sickbed has been too high for too long. Early this year the Government finally came down from the fence and recommended an end to hospital wide bans on the use of mobile phones. Fewer charges on our wards are something we all aspire to and this will be a useful step forward.
In 2005 one of my closest friends spent a long period in hospital with Breast Cancer and seeing her go through this gruelling experience made a big impact on my impending career in Parliament.
Like most modern MPs I wanted to try do the right thing by those people who felt frustrated at the costs and complications that go seemingly hand in hand with encounters of ‘the system’.
The exorbitant cost of outgoing and incoming calls from bedside entertainment units seemed a good place to start. Illness brings enough financial ramifications for families without them being fleeced for keeping in touch during a hugely stressful and emotional time.
In 2005 I was paying up to 50p a minute to call the hospital and so were millions of others. With mobile phones becoming increasingly mainstream items which possess far more sophisticated technology than their predecessors I wondered along with many others whether they could be used in hospital under appropriate circumstances.
A few enquiries of hospital staff informed me that the general consensus was that mobile phones presented a risk to patient’s health through their propensity to interfere with electro magnetic equipment. I could easily believe this of the brick like devices of the late 80s but wasn’t so sure about the sleeker devices we have become accustomed to.
Late in 2005 the Medicines and Healthcare Regulations Agency (MHRA) found a blanket ban to be unnecessary and reported that there was no evidence to suggest mobile telephones present a hazard when used in public areas within hospitals. This provided me with evidence to back up the common sense assumptions of many others.
It was following the MHRA report that more Patient and Public Involvement Forums began to explore the rationale for the ongoing blanket ban. Their surveys proved that the lack of access to safe areas to use mobile phones was exploiting patients and their families by forcing them to use over-priced bedside phones to keep in touch.
It was armed with this knowledge which was drawn from service users across the country that I tabled a Commons motion calling for an end to the taboo around mobile phone use in hospitals.
In early 2006 Ofcom closed its investigation into the price of telephone calls to hospital patients with a recommendation that the Department of Health review all aspects of the installation and operation of bedside telephone and entertainment systems in hospitals. Whilst Ofcom did not call for mobile phones to be allowed in hospitals their investigation added to a growing feeling that enough was enough. Claims were doing the rounds that some bedside entertainment providers were urging PCTs to keep their blanket bans in place for fear of falling revenue.
In August 2006 the Department of Health issued its first ever piece of guidance on the use of mobile phones in hospitals which stated that it was up to individual PCTs to decide upon their own policies with regards to the use of Mobile Phones in their hospitals. It is this piece of guidance which was updated early this year with the expectation that all hospital-wide mobile phone bans should be lifted.
I’m delighted that Ministers have recognised that ensuring that patients are able to keep in close contact with friends and loved ones during their hospital treatment, at a time when they need them most, is a priority.
Individual NHS trusts will decide implementation of the revised guidance based on their knowledge of their hospital environment, and ensure patients, staff and visitors are made aware of their policy.
Nobody thinks that such a change can come without new challenges for management. We know that the use of mobile phones must be restricted in areas where critical care equipment is used, such as infusion pumps, dialysis units and foetal heart monitors. Establishing clear on site communication for patients and visitors to avoid transgressing these rules is essential. Dignity and privacy are essential at all times and how hospitals deal with the challenges mobile phones present to maintaining them will prove to be crunch issues for the successful roll out of new mobile phone policies.
The ethos of choice must remain integral to the development of NHS services. I believe that the recent guidelines show a firm commitment to making sure that as much choice as possible remains with patients during their stay in hospital.
Payphone and bedside systems including TV, telephone and internet access will still be available for patients who do not want to use or do not have access to a mobile phone. These services should remain for sale and alternatives cannot be easily provided which makes me believe that the revenue generated from such systems will remain for sometime to come. Safe wider mobile phone usage in hospitals reflects public expectation that they are very much part of daily life. Last month’s announcement signals an end to exorbitant communication costs for those who most need to stay in touch.
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Sharon Hodgson MP
House of Commons,
London SW1A 0AA
E-mail: hodgsons@parliament.uk
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