TVs in hospital: £10 a day!

arcon5

jb66 wrote: »

Hand in an iPad or a portable DVD player

I wouldn't be surprised if they soon caught on to this and fitted a pay as you go device to the plug socket :rotfl:

mynameistallulah

MarkBargain wrote: »

Yes, you are right. At £10 a day it doesn't take many days to pay for a new LCD television!

And the costs of customer support, interest on the initial outlay, maintenance etc?

MarkBargain

mynameistallulah wrote: »

The costs of administering such a scheme (initial outlay, customer support, maintenance etc) would outweigh the benefits to the patient and the Trust - this was investigated when PL was first awarded the contract.

How come the firm is turning in a £2M a year profit then?

Scrap the 'scheme', put some £100-quid TVs on the wards and just charge patients a small fee to pay for them. Presumably wards used to have TVs before 'Patientline'?

MarkBargain

mynameistallulah wrote: »

And the costs of customer support, interest on the initial outlay, maintenance etc?

The only customer/patients support needed is to lower the blood pressure of patients when they see the charges!

The_pc_tech

Think it was about a fiver per 24 hours last time I was in hospital about 11 years ago, I reluctantly paid it as I was waiting around a lot in between x-rays just so I could watch the news otherwise I might have gone off my head.

good_advice

Hiya, we had this also with the hospital tv last year with our son (22).
He was in for a week. At first we paid for the tv and then hit on the idea of taking my travel dvd player in. It has headphones. This was a good move. Each day we visited I just took about 6 dvds in and he choose what he wanted to watch.The rest came back home.

In your case being 90 years young he may not want one. Try some books or puzzle books.

mynameistallulah

MarkBargain wrote: »

How come the firm is turning in a £2M a year profit then?

Scrap the 'scheme', put some £100-quid TVs on the wards and just charge patients a small fee to pay for them. Presumably wards used to have TVs before 'Patientline'?

Simple - economies of scale, and far greater efficiency than the NHS is capable of.

MarkBargain wrote: »

The only customer/patients support needed is to lower the blood pressure of patients when they see the charges!

So all those people that struggle with technology should be left to it - if you can't use it yourself, you'll have to go without? Or should they just have a go, and break it? Oh no, but then how does it get repaired?

Your idea is flawed. The research was done here, it simply was not viable to keep the service in house and keep up with modern standards. Perhaps the DoH would still have the consultation documents? I don't know, it was a long time ago. You could do a FoI request if you really want to know?

Ellejmorgan

MarkBargain wrote: »

My Grandad is in his 90s and was admitted to hospital recently. At home he mainly spends time watching TV so we went to set up the 'Patientline' TVs by his bedside, ready to pay a small fee.

The costs are extortionate: £10 for a 'bundle' including the Freeview channels for 24 hours! There was a cheaper £5 option, but that was only for 12 hours and only included 5 basic channels. There were bundles that worked out cheaper per day for longer periods, but we did not know how long he would be in hospital so didn't want to pay £25 quid-odd.

We would have reluctantly paid, but Granddad went up the wall when he heard the prices and refused to look at the TV at all. So, he is sitting in hospital bored outside visiting hours, unable to watch TV due to the greedy profit of the people providing these TV sets.

Surely it's not too much to ask for patients to have an LCD TV in hospital these days?! By the way, if you don't pay there is a video loop of Andrew Lansley and advertising for packages. The TV can be switched off, but many are on in the wards, using NHS electricity.

I was in for 5 days in Feb and paid £20, got all freeview and made free phonecalls to landlines...

Has doubled you are right used to be £2 per day, it's worse on maternity they bedhopped me when I had my baby, was moved 4 times, one lass couldn't get her tv on as no staff on the patientline, so she lost her money when she was bedhopped...

I think it's one of those things we have to just do when ill as it's no fun sitting there with nothing to do...

MarkBargain

mynameistallulah wrote: »

Simple - economies of scale, and far greater efficiency than the NHS is capable of.

So all those people that struggle with technology should be left to it - if you can't use it yourself, you'll have to go without? Or should they just have a go, and break it? Oh no, but then how does it get repaired?

Your idea is flawed. The research was done here, it simply was not viable to keep the service in house and keep up with modern standards. Perhaps the DoH would still have the consultation documents? I don't know, it was a long time ago. You could do a FoI request if you really want to know?

The NHS is one of the largest organisations in the world and it is not beyond its wit to install a few TVs for patients.

Even my 90 year old grandad can operate a TV. Besides, the support on the wards is left to nurses. There are no Patientline people on site helping patients you know!

As for the years-old research you keep talking about, which was no doubt driven by a privatisation-driven agenda, since this time the cost of LCD TVs has FALLEN DRAMATICALLY and the cost of the service to patients has INCREASED DRAMATICALLY due to price increases by the provider.

Patientline out! The campaign starts here. :T

MarkBargain

Ellejmorgan wrote: »

Isn't that if you want the full bundle though, I was in for 5 days in Feb and paid £20, got all freeview and made free phonecalls to landlines...

Has doubled you are right used to be £2 per day

The only cheaper 'bundle' was £5 for 12 hours of 5 channels, but Grandad's favourite channel is BBC News 24 so he'd want the standard Freeview channels (not too much to ask really) and £10 was the cheapest for a day I believe.

In 2006 it was £3.50 for 18 channels according to the article.