MAP@AI.AI.MIT.EDU.UUCP (06/05/87)
The following item appears in the Business Notes section of the Time magazine dated June 8, 1987. It appears with a photograph captioned "In hospitals, these devices make money" and which shows what appears to be a standard cheap one-piece phone being plugged into a modular jack by a patient (you can tell by the wrist band ID (which is readable). New Products: Nurse, Get Me A Telephone Disposable razors have long been a consumer staple, and throwaway cameras are a new photographic fad. Now the latest items to use and lose are telephones. Several companies, including Mini-Phone, Diversified Communications and International Connectors, are selling an estimated 100,000 lightweight, disposable phones a year, and the market is growing fast. The best customers are not individuals but hospitals, which sell the phones to patients as a moneymaking venture. Health-care institutions pay a manufacturer about $9 a phone, then charge patients about $12 to use the instrument during their stay. And since many patients formerly walked off with standard-issue phones (average price: $75), the theft of a disposable phone is less costly. Says Kendall Gallagher, a Mini-Phone vice president: ``A patient confronted with a hospital bill might feel he's entitled to everything in the room, including the phone.'' Philadelphia's Mercy Catholic Medical Center estimates that it saves between $50,000 and $75,000 a year by installing the discardable devices. Indeed, they have proved so popular that throw-away phones will soon be sold in the hospital's gift shop--at 30% over cost.