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From: MAP@AI.AI.MIT.EDU.UUCP
Newsgroups: comp.dcom.telecom
Subject: Nurse, Get Me A Telephone
Message-ID: <210379.870605.MAP@AI.AI.MIT.EDU>
Date: Fri, 5-Jun-87 13:01:20 EDT
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Posted: Fri Jun  5 13:01:20 1987
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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.