Patients better off dialling 0870 to talk to their doctor says new survey

A new report investigating the cost of phoning your GP has challenged the commonly held view that 0870 numbers are a more expensive way of contacting your local surgery. The report, conducted by Cable Telecom Europe, involved the scrutiny of over 100 surgeries across the country. The study concluded that, due to considerably reduced call waiting times, patients were actually financially better off calling their GP if they had installed an 0870 number.

The survey compared the cost and duration of calls to surgeries before and after the introduction of 0870 numbers, and found that the average call duration halved in length after installation of the system. This was mainly due to improved routing of calls to the surgeries.   An additional benefit was the elimination of the engaged tone - meaning that patients no longer needed to keep re-dialling to speak to their GP.

Nearly 300 surgeries across the UK have adopted the new phone service called Surgery Line, supplied by NEG Plc.
  They currently service over a million patients in the UK .
  The system is designed to ease communications between patients and their GP by speeding up the whole process of booking or cancelling an appointment. A survey carried out in 2002 found that the average duration of patients’ calls to their GP was just under 221 seconds, compared to an average call duration of 110 seconds to a practice using a Surgery Line system in December 2004.

The issue of 0870 numbers was raised during a debate on BBC Radio 2’s Jeremy Vine show yesterday (12 January) in which doctors were accused of profiteering from 0870 numbers.
  As representatives of the telecoms industry, NEG Plc were able to present the report’s findings to support their case. “Doctors’ surgeries do not make a profit from Surgery Line.

  The 0870 number is simply a mechanism that enables them to fund a state of the art switch board offering a better service for patients and reduced waiting times,” explains Richard Chapman, CEO of NEG. “Before a practice introduces the 0870 number, patients may find it almost impossible to get through at peak times of the day because the phone is permanently engaged. After installation of the system, the patient can always get through, and is actually able to halve the amount of time that they spend on the phone to their surgery.  The 0870 number actually saves the patient both time and money.”

Contact Details:

Richard Chapman, CEO, NEG
             Tel: NEG 01268 461 543 / 07966 341 041