0844 surgery telephone number

Our 0844 surgery telephone number is under the spotlight again from the PCT and patients. The 0844 number allows us to use a sophisticated digital telephone system so that patients never get an engaged tone and we can arrange how our staff work so that we have more people answering the phone at peak times.

Calls to our 0844 number costs just over 5p per minute from a BT landline. This is less expensive than the standard BT rate to a normal geographic number but will cost patients more than calling a normal geographic number if you have a telephone package that includes free daytime local calls because calls to 0844 numbers are often excluded from the package. Of course calls from mobiles are considerably more expensive. It varies according to your package but I found prices varying from 40p per minute from Orange to 20p on an o2 monthly contract.

If you are concerned about the cost of the call to the surgery then do ask our staff to call you back. We will do this and of course we routinely ring patients on mobile numbers for telephone consultations and don't limit calls to patients on just landline numbers.

We are currently reviewing our current service provide (NEG Surgery Line) and looking at ways to make it cheaper for all our patients to call us.

So watch this space!

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