Mark wrote:
On Thu, 15 Aug 2013 11:25:57 +0100, "Tim Downie"
wrote:

F wrote:
On 15/08/2013 10:28 Tim+ wrote:

Mark wrote:
On Wed, 14 Aug 2013 15:48:37 +0100, "Tim Downie"
wrote:

Mentalguy2k8 wrote:
I think if my mother were to start losing her marbles I'd buy her
a Truecall unit and set it up to *only* pass calls through from a
"white list" and not ring at all for un-recognised numbers.

But then she would not be able to receive calls from the Police,
Doctors or Hospital if she needed to.

How often do the police need to ring her? Doctors and hospital
should give out a switchboard number at the very least.

Doctors and hospitals here come up as 'number withheld'.

And here.

Which is disgraceful.

I've never understood why it's considered okay for some hospitals (and other
institutions) to withhold their number. If I were to go around ringing
folks' doorbells wearing a paperbag over my head or a balaclava it would be
considered unacceptable.

I totally agree. However I have had this discussion with many people
and consider we are in a minority. I have heard all sorts of lame
excuses for why they withhold their number such as:

- Their call might alert someone else that the intended recipient has
been contacted by a medical organisation and they might want to keep
it secret.
- Their switchboard can't (present a number).
- Their switchboard can only present one number and not their direct
dial number.

I don't accept any of these as valid reasons for withholding their
number.

The simple answer is to block all such calls and force the institutions to
change their policies. If it can work in Ayrshire (when hospitals
discovered that they couldn't contact patients), it could work anywhere.

It hasn't worked here.

Yet. It takes time but when our hospital realised how many folk were
missing appointments or were unable to take advantage of cancellations they
started presenting a switchboard number. Problem solved.

Tim