Phoning a hospital patient costs more than ringing Australia

But there will be no reduction in the exorbitant charge of 49p a minute for friends and relatives to call patients - higher than the price of a call to Australia.

A 70 per cent increase for pensioners using bedside TV systems, after their concessionary rate was scrapped in April, will also remain.

The private firm Patientline, which has debts of £80million, had raised the cost of an outgoing call from 10p a minute to 26p a minute in April. But yesterday it reverted to the 10p charge.

It admitted it had been forced to cut charges because fewer patients were calling out, put off by the high cost.

Patientline has also been hit by a Department of Health ruling that a blanket ban on using mobile phones in hospitals were unnecessary.

Michael Summers, chairman of the Patients' Association, welcomed the price cut but said the cost of incoming calls was still too high.

"It's getting pretty close to robbery, frankly," he said. "They must realise that most of these people are not in a position to pay these sort of fees."

Former Patientline worker Peter Troy, who left to campaign against the increases, said the proportion of patients using bedside phones plummeted from 33 per cent to 20 per cent when the price rise came in.

He said: "Patientline have been forced into this because they have overpriced their product to ridiculous levels.

"We welcome this reversal of policy and hope they extend it to reinstating the concessionary rate for pensioners that existed before April 30."

Dr Steven Lowden, chief executive of the Commission for Patient and Public Involvement in Health, said: "Our survey of over 1,200 patients showed that nearly 90 per cent of patients rated the cost of incoming calls as expensive or very expensive."

Patientline's phone and TV systems are installed at more than 75,000 bedsides in 156 hospitals.

The new charging structure also reduces the minimum charge for making calls from the hospital bed, from 40p to 10p.

Patientline's commercial-director Charlotte Brown said: "In April we raised the price of outgoing calls but lowered the price for TV which meant that the majority paid less overall, but we felt we did not communicate that effectively to customers."

But she said there were no plans to reduce incoming call charges.

"At the moment incoming calls will stay at the same rate because our focus is on the cost to the patient in the hospital bed," she said.

Patientline has already been ordered by communications watchdog Ofcom to work with the Department of Health to reduce incoming call charges.

In April, the discounted rate for pensioners to use TV, Internet and games was scrapped, meaning they faced a 70 per cent increase from £1.70 a day to the full rate of £2.90.