£5 a scan picture?!

[CSISaraSidle]

I was at my ultrasound scan the other day and decided I'd quite like a picture. When my mum had me she got it in a lovely little card thing with corner cutouts to hold it. It was very sweet, and I assumed mine would be the same!
When I was handed a tear off printout that had been torn badly and was told "that'll be £5, please pay at this machine" I was a little !

John I didn't complain about the tear to the sonographer.

Mine were free in 1998 and 2 quid each in 2016, I had twins and they did me a bogof which I thought was lovely. If you can't afford a few quid on your scan photo you can't really afford a kid imo

When I was first pregnant it was £50 to find out the sex but pictures were free in a little cardboard frame.
Then it changed to them not revealing sex at scans at all but still free pictures and frame.
When I had DC3 and DC4 it was free to find out sex but scan pictures cost £5, frame free.

@BertieBotts and @Iown5pairsofDocMartens I was on ivillage years ago too. I was a community leader for a few years too.

Bloody hell, I just googled what the fancy thermal paper used in those machines costs. £5 really doesn't seem that bad.

It's a fiver for an important photo.

Nocoolnames, bloody hell indeed! Didn't realise it was that much for thermal imaging paper!

I just meant it's a shame that the hospital policy means both parents can't come in. Or did I read it wrong and they meant you +1.

Anyway going massively off topic. It is the norm and doesn't seem to have increased over the years. Varies with each hospital too

OP complain to the hospital about the appointment letters not having the cost of the scans on it. I thought most hospitals told you how much they cost to avoid people turning up without the money and getting upset, especially in hospitals where you aren't allowed to take a photo/video of the screen.

If it stops people getting a scan photo and shoving it at me great! No I really don’t want to see a boring print out of a black and white blob, show me a proper picture once the baby arrives ffs!

I think it's perfectly reasonable to charge you the cost price of producing the print (rounded to avoid difficulties with making change).

I don't think it's ethical of the NHS to cover any of the scan costs or to make a profit out of selling the pictures. But I doubt a fiver is likely to be more than the cost of providing the pictures. If the NHS no longer need print-outs themselves, then the additional cost of having a printer at all needs to be covered. There's the cost of maintenance, paper and ink, handling the money, etc. The cost of dealing with any mishaps. Potentially the cost of staff time (potentially highly qualified, expensive staff) dealing with patient questions or complaints. This all adds up and will be more expensive in a specialist setting than if you were running a photo printer at a copy shop.

My local hospital charges £5 for 1 scan picture, £10 for 3 and £15 for 10. We paid for 1 picture and they gave us about 8. Any profits go to the hospitals neonatal intensive care unit. I'm more than happy with that.
And congratulations!

We had problems discovered at the scan and didn't have to pay for the photos.
I would far rather have been given positive news and paid a fiver

Our NHS trust charges (the bit that annoyed me more was the misplaced apostrophe in the notice about "photos of scan's" in the waiting room to be honest) but I was seeing the recurrent miscarriage consultant with both my successful pregnancies and she was just throwing scan photos at me like they were nothing every scan appointment I went to when they could get a good view of something baby-shaped (she didn't bother for the ones where it was basically a blob with a heartbeat - and bloody hell the heartbeat was all we were bothered about at that point)!

When she heard I was a teacher in the scan room the first thing she said was "DON'T LAMINATE THE PHOTOS!!!" I think teachers have a reputation or something for if it stands still - laminate it!

Scan pictures may have been free and nicely presented in the past but we've got millions more people living here now so resources are severely stretched. The NHS is not a bottomless pit. I'd rather the NHS spent their resources on cancer care etc. rather than freebie pictures.

You cant even get a passport photo done for £5.

I had a scan done this week and they gave us no print outs. They told us to take a photo of the scanned images using our phones.

Some of our patients want so many scan prints, one each for the grandparents , a couple for themselves , another few for aunties and uncles , lots of requests for a better view . It's a medical scan not a bloody photo shoot !

SPARKS17 You paid for a private appointment so they could probably afford to get you cake and coffee. As the NHS doesn't require pictures of scans (they are stored digitally for their use) they have to pay for the equipment AND the additional time it takes to find an acceptable picture. It's not like the staff are buying Swizzles sweets with the proceeds. Health care is not free, everything costs money. The NHS is abused terribly and that puts pressure on all the services unlike private care which cherry picks the treatments that cost the least and makes profit for shareholders.

I've had 3 growth scans since my 20 week scan and have had no photos even offered to buy. It's purely to see how baby is growing so that's not been an option.

Mine were free in 2013

Sounds normal to me. They wouldn't let me buy one for my mmc baby, made me look at it though, the shits.

Mine were £5 each, which is fine, but what really stressed me out was having to pay BEFORE having the scan and being super anxious that something might be wrong. It wasn't so much the potential waste of money, but fear/anxiety that I was somehow jinxing it by assuming I would definitely want photos. IYSWIM.

Honey- sorry, yes, me plus one.

And I'm not too bothered by it, as a single parent the only people I'm having there are my parents and my sister, so I don't care about the plus 1 rule! I'm sure other people care though