Paying for Patient Telephone Calls

For years, BIDMC has required patients to pay for toll calls. Local calling was made free to them over a decade ago. Periodically, I receive complaints from patients about having to use telephone debit cards, credit cards or collect calling to reach parties in Massachusetts area codes. Today, we use a hospitality service to handle outgoing toll calls from patient rooms. When a patient calls a toll number (9-0-xxx-xxx-xxxx), the hospitality service handles the billing. Their charges for this service tend to be high, e.g. several dollars per toll call regardless of duration.

With the rates for in-State toll calls at only twice that of local calls, we have elected to pilot free calling to all Massachusetts area codes from a limited number of patient room phones. Once fully implemented, there are 360 patient room phones that could have free in-State calling.

It is difficult to estimate what may be the financial impact of this action. We asked the hospitality service how many calls were made to in-State area codes that involve toll charges. They show only 70 calls. The use of the service, however, is likely impacted by their high charges and the complexity of making an outgoing toll call. Also, many friends and relatives call patients which incur no charge since they originate outside the hospital. Similarly, many patients use cell phones for out-dialing.

To gauge what may be the calling activity for other MA areas, we looked at call activity occurring to the existing "local" calling area today from the patient room phones that would be impacted. Today, patients can call toll free to 617/857 and parts of 781/339. During the month of November, there were 12,593 calls totaling 35,672 minutes.

We estimate that 80 percent of non-critical care days are for patients residing in the current local calling area. The other areas in Massachusetts represent only 12 percent of non-critical care days. Although this represents residence zip codes of the patients and not zip codes of friends/relatives they would call in Massachusetts, I believe it provides some assurance the extended in-State calling will not be high volume or high cost. Many patients use personal cell phones and will likely continue to do so.

I'll report back on the cost of our pilot and the impact on patient satisfaction. I am curious - what are other hospitals doing? Feel free to post a comment with your hospital's approach to patient toll calls.