0844 number for doctor?!
Question: Doctors are being persuaded by telephone equipment suppliers and service providers, to change to a non-geographic 0844 number to book an appointment and 0870 numbers for calls from overseas countries.
These numbers are revenue sharing numbers and generate an income for the doctors surgery and/or the telephone service provider and encourage the queuing of calls to generate extra revenue.
This practice penalises the poor, elderly and other persons who do not have access to a home phone and must rely on a public phone box and is additional un-neccessary burden and cost on illness.
Please petition the government to stop this at petitions.pm.gov.uk/NGN-use-by-GPs
Answers: Doctors are being persuaded by telephone equipment suppliers and service providers, to change to a non-geographic 0844 number to book an appointment and 0870 numbers for calls from overseas countries.
These numbers are revenue sharing numbers and generate an income for the doctors surgery and/or the telephone service provider and encourage the queuing of calls to generate extra revenue.
This practice penalises the poor, elderly and other persons who do not have access to a home phone and must rely on a public phone box and is additional un-neccessary burden and cost on illness.
Please petition the government to stop this at petitions.pm.gov.uk/NGN-use-by-GPs
The rules for revenue sharing changed in December.
The owner of the 0870 number now gets very little, if anything at all now.