With mental health patients in Berkshire to be relocated from Ascot, Maidenhead and Slough to Reading, Berkshire Healthcare NHS Foundation Trust is suggesting that relatives of the patients use Skype to speak to their loved ones, instead of travelling to the hospital everyday!

The suggestion is largely based on the fact that with the shifting of the patients to a new mental health facility, the hospital chiefs are looking into ways to reduce £4million a year by avoiding the reimbursement of travel costs to visitors.

Officials at Berkshire Healthcare NHS Trust are clearly attempting to stop bedside visits in an effort to save cash earmarked for the travel expenses of patients’ relatives --- more so as some relatives would be eligible for travel expenses to visit their sick family member.

The Trust’s proposal – that families should stop visiting patients and Skype them instead, and have conversations over a webcam from miles away – has drawn the ire of carers, councillors as well as health care charities.

Terming the proposal as “ludicrous”, Colin Pill - chairman of the Local Involvement Network branch – said: “I had to read the document twice to believe what I was seeing” --- that is, Skype being recommended by doctors, over bedside visits, to relatives for keeping in touch with their loved ones in hospital.

The proposal seems all the more absurd given the fact that, as pointed out by local voluntary service chief Eleanor Cryer: “Most elderly people don’t want computers and have never heard of Skype”!