TVs in hospital: £10 a day!

MX5huggy

phoneguy wrote: »

Quite bizarre. If you are sent to prison, you'll find a TV in almost every cell. Typically they charge prisoners 50p a week for all the freeview channels.

Methinks something ain't right with the balance here..........

But the prison population has to be kept calm as we rely on prisoners being compliant else staffing levels would have to quadruple.

getmore4less

It may have been said but the failure and costs are down to the failure to integrate with the hospital systems for bedside notes etc. the revenue stream from the hospitals never came.

The best solution these days and probably cheaper is a laptop/netbook with recorded media for films tv series etc, internet TV using a data conection on a mobile using a laptop if no wi-fi in the hospital.

elff

When my son was in hospital we spent a fotune on thease bloody cards - he moved wards 3 times an beds in the last ward twice... non eog the cards were interchanable so we had to buy new cards.

One of the wards he was on pre surgery had ALOT of urgent cases (kids fallen down / hit by cars etc waiting for surgery slots ) most parents had no money on them. My boy shared his telly with all the kids in the same bay. ALL parent were shocked that the telly card was a tenner!! - most were also shocked that parents had to buy there own food as well

jackieb

elff wrote: »

When my son was in hospital we spent a fotune on thease bloody cards - he moved wards 3 times an beds in the last ward twice... non eog the cards were interchanable so we had to buy new cards.

One of the wards he was on pre surgery had ALOT of urgent cases (kids fallen down / hit by cars etc waiting for surgery slots ) most parents had no money on them. My boy shared his telly with all the kids in the same bay. ALL parent were shocked that the telly card was a tenner!! - most were also shocked that parents had to buy there own food as well

Well I can understand having to buy your own food - it's not a hotel! But at the local children's hospital the TV's are free - well they were the last time my daughter was in.

Children's Hospital still has free TV from 7am - 7pm with 2hr mini bundles available for £1.00 outwith these hours. Internet is not available on Children's wards.

At night, when the little one's were sleeping, the nurses used to bring my daughter a portable dvd player and some dvd's. :A

paddyrg

MarkBargain wrote: »

The £3.50 is only for 2 hours of channels 1 to 5 though. Once you activate the credit you can't stop the clock ticking, so you can't watch an hour programme at 1pm and another one at 7pm, the credit would just run 1pm to 3pm.

I note too on the leaflet the previous posted scanned in that the 'mini bundle' of 5 channels jumps from £5 for 12 hours to £45 for 30 days. That's hardly user friendly, is it?!

Fair enough, I agree it represents pretty terrible value for short-term users, and just plain lousy value value for long-stay patients ;-)

totallybored

I'm sure it was nearly a fiver a day when my mum was in hospital 5 years ago and I thought that was ridiculous back then. £10 a day to watch free view channels is outrageous. There were several people in the ward who just couldn't afford the tv and I can't imagine how depressing it must be to sit in a bed all day when you're really sick and have absolutely nothing to do.

I ended up having an argument with what was then Patientline customer services over a refund. The Scottish girl in the call centre admitted it was a horrible job and said it was soul destroying talking to ill patients who had to call all the time as the service would cut out, theyd be moved beds and lose their access, their money would run out before they expected etc (apparently a lot of older people though 12 hour access meant they could watch 12 hours of tv when they wanted so could use it over several days for their soaps etc). I remember telling her she seemed like a nice person and deserved to work for a company that didn't just make money out of sick people.

Ellejmorgan

elff wrote: »

When my son was in hospital we spent a fotune on thease bloody cards - he moved wards 3 times an beds in the last ward twice... non eog the cards were interchanable so we had to buy new cards.

One of the wards he was on pre surgery had ALOT of urgent cases (kids fallen down / hit by cars etc waiting for surgery slots ) most parents had no money on them. My boy shared his telly with all the kids in the same bay. ALL parent were shocked that the telly card was a tenner!! - most were also shocked that parents had to buy there own food as well

You have to call the helpline they swap it for you, you tell them that you've swapped beds

Ellejmorgan

totallybored wrote: »

I'm sure it was nearly a fiver a day when my mum was in hospital 5 years ago and I thought that was ridiculous back then. £10 a day to watch free view channels is outrageous. There were several people in the ward who just couldn't afford the tv and I can't imagine how depressing it must be to sit in a bed all day when you're really sick and have absolutely nothing to do.

I ended up having an argument with what was then Patientline customer services over a refund. The Scottish girl in the call centre admitted it was a horrible job and said it was soul destroying talking to ill patients who had to call all the time as the service would cut out, theyd be moved beds and lose their access, their money would run out before they expected etc (apparently a lot of older people though 12 hour access meant they could watch 12 hours of tv when they wanted so could use it over several days for their soaps etc). I remember telling her she seemed like a nice person and deserved to work for a company that didn't just make money out of sick people.

It still is a £5 the op won't be told though

Dunroamin

WelshBluebird wrote: »

When I was in hospital last (granted it was around 13 years ago!), there was a TV fitted on a wall in most, if not all, of the wards. Is that still not the case?

One would certainly hope not - what a horrendous idea!

Sandwich

Unfortunately this is a relatively minor aspect of a broader movement towards public private partnership/private finance initiatives under the last few Labour governments (not that the Tories would have done any differently).

Basically, we don't want to spend money as a government because that would be unpopular, so we'll make a deal with a private provider so that it does us a favour now (e.g. putting TVs in hospitals), but in return we'll give it a monopoly over a particular service for years to come, meaning that future generations will pay for it through the nose.