Almost 90% of hospital patients and visitors think that calls to bedside phones are too expensive, a new survey indicated.
The cost of calling a bedside telephone unit was already under scrutiny by the Department of Health after it emerged that friends and relatives were being charged as much as 49p a minute for incoming calls.
This was 15 times higher than the daytime rate for calls with BT's standard package and compared unfavourably with a cost of 24p a minute to call Australia on a normal landline.
Today's survey, from the Patient and Public Involvement Forums (PPIF), which represented community views on health, was based on interviews at 78 hospitals where bedside telephone units are installed.
It found that while 38% of people thought the overall service - including telephone, TV, internet and games - was good and convenient, most thought the costs were very high.
Of the 1,255 people questioned, 88% said they thought the charges for inbound calls were either "expensive" or "very expensive", while just 1% thought they were cheap and 6% thought they were fair.
Despite concern about the costs, patients often have little choice but to use the phones for incoming and outgoing calls as many trusts prohibit the use of mobile phones in hospital wards.
In January, the telephone regulator Ofcom recommended that the Department of Health look into "all aspects" of the installation and operation of bedside telephone and entertainment systems in hospitals following a seven-month investigation.
The watchdog said high call charges were a result of a "complex" web of government policy and agreements between the providers, companies such as Patientline, Hospicom and Premier, the NHS and individual NHS Trusts.
The government review, which will report next month, is examining the nature of the agreements, as well as looking at the use of a recorded message at the start of a call to warn of the cost.
A Patientline spokesman said that its charges were dictated by government regulations and fully acknowledged concerns raised about incoming call charges.
"We have long wanted to reduce the cost of incoming charges, which are being reviewed by the review group set up by Department of Health," he said.
The company had spent £1m installing units in each hospital, as well as funding running costs on each site, and had not yet broken even.
A Department of Health spokesperson said: "We are taking the concerns expressed seriously and that is why we have commissioned a wide-ranging review into the charging structure.
"This survey confirms that the review being carried out is covering all the issues that these patients are raising.
"The review group is considering all aspects of the call charges and also the requirement to install units at every bedside, guidance on mobile phone use in hospital and minimum standards of functionality for these systems."
