Freephone systems from Infopoint help UK hospitals in fight to reduce smoking

Free telephone help points installed in hospitals across the UK are connecting patients with smoking services and helping with smoking cessation.

A major new report released in 2018 by the Royal College of Physicians (RCP) calls for a radical change in the way the NHS treats smoking by providing opt-out cessation services as a routine component of all hospital care.

The report, Hiding in plain sight: Treating tobacco dependency in the NHS^[1], says that giving smokers the help they need to quit smoking while in hospital will save lives, improve quality of life as well as increasing life expectancy, and help to reduce the current £1 billion per year cost to the NHS as a result of smoking by patients and staff.

As the UK’s leading provider of free telephone help points in hospitals, health centres and clinics, Infopoint provides free access to a whole host of helplines and many more services including NHS Smokefree.

Sarah Bennison, Director at Infopoint has said: ‘’NHS Smokefree studies show that people are four times more likely to quit smoking with help”.

‘’The Infopoint help points, which are usually located in hospital entrances and exits, are providing more ways for patients to have immediate access to smoking support in hospitals, and we believe this could be a significant factor in helping hospitals and health centres treat smoking.”

In 2017/18 there were 489,300 hospital admissions that were attributable to smoking, as confirmed in the report, ‘Statistics on Smoking, England’- published in 2019[2].

^[1] https://www.rcplondon.ac.uk/projects/outputs/hiding-plain-sight-treating-tobacco-dependency-nhs

[2] https://digital.nhs.uk/data-and-information/publications/statistical/statistics-on-smoking/statistics-on-smoking-england-2019