tony sayer wrote:

In our local hospital Addenbrookes Cambridge, they use Patientline which
costs but as far as I know its free on the children's wards, so perhaps
not that bad


And in same said hispital when my wife went in she bought a £5 card to
use the paitentline telephone. ('Cause I couldn't afford the premium
rate for incoming calls). She was then carted off to theatre and on her
return no card to be found anywhere!

I understand that the systems are a self financing way of getting more
IT infrastructure built into the hospitals. Upgrades being required to
support the system and are shared by other systems! Dunno of the
pedigree of this info though.