General Practitioners: Telephone Services
(asked on 3rd July 2014) - View Source
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health, if he will take steps to enable surgeries to end contracts to use 0844 numbers early.
This question was answered on 8th July 2014
Regulations introduced in 2010 prevented general practitioner practices from entering into, renewing or extending a contract for telephone services unless it was satisfied that, looking at the arrangements as a whole, patients would not pay more to make calls to the practice than they would to make calls to a geographical number.
It is for NHS England to ensure that practices are meeting the terms of their contracting arrangements.