To think £7.90 per day for TV in hospital is ridiculous

[UltimateWednesday]

How do they justify this? What "costs" does it cover? Just for freeview TV, no WiFI or cable channels.

The NHS will always be in dire straits, no matter how much money you throw at it, it will take it and absorb it. Not saying it's right, but they will spend whatever needs spent, it is indeed a bottomless pit.

The only fair way re food etc is to provide it as it's not like most patients have any choice, they can't just wander off and make their own or indeed shouldn't have it brought in either.

A lot of benefits will be stopped for those in receipt and having a long stay in hospital, they are probably still paying rent and base costs for utilities as well. And i'm sure no-one is in there for the fun of it.

It's a lot! My mum was in hospital for 4 months earlier in the year and I paid for it for her. When we realised it was going to be a long stay we were able to buy it in longer chunks which saved money but still a lot! It was worth it as she had nothing else to do.

That is bloody expensive, I now feel extra grateful it was free during my maternity stays!

Mine has BBC1, 2 and radio free, any other channel is subscription. It's a total rip off. BBC is shite in the daytime.
Any chance you can take a DVD player and DVDs or a laptop with wifi to stream?

Our local hospital caused an uproar when they got rid of all the portable TVs (most of which had been donated) in favour of a TV / phone system.

Fast forward a few short years, everyone has mobiles / smart phones / tablets and nobody uses the TV system to the point they disconnected it.

I know a fair bit about this.

The provider is a private company, the major player is Hospedia but there are others.

The equipment, TVs, brackets etc were installed for free to the NHS, up to 30 years ago.

The business model means that the patient pays through the nose for TV and phone as this is how the provider makes their money.

Each hospital is worth 100s of 1000s a year in revenue.

It's a terrible model and as their contracts expire Trusts are replacing them, and these types of providers are now struggling. So the service is shit too!

Sadly many trusts were locked into 30 year contracts so it will take a long time to eradicate these systems entirely.

I should also point out, the hospital makes absolutely no money from this, all the revenue goes to the private provider.

This still annoys me. My nan was in hospital before she died and when I went in one day she was sat there doing nothing. I asked her why and she said she couldn't afford the television. She had never liked reading and was bedbound. I immediately went and bought her two weeks worth of television. I had to do the same for my grandfather when he was dying of cancer. All he wanted was something to watch to take his mind off it, but couldn't bring himself to spend that much money for what he considered as something selfish.

When my DSis was in hospital with HG about 15 years ago, the company that had the TV contract had an outrageous system where you had to buy non-refundable "credits" in £10 or £5 blocks that you used to buy TV packages that were not charged in round numbers eg £7.90 per day or £16.50 for 3 days so it was impossible to use up all your credits.

That is ridiculous for bog standard tv. I would read instead.

Ours is that per day which is a rip off. But the WiFi is free so most people were using their phone or tablet on that... not great for live streaming as so many people using it, but find for downloading.

@goingoverground

When my DSis was in hospital with HG about 15 years ago, the company that had the TV contract had an outrageous system where you had to buy non-refundable "credits" in £10 or £5 blocks that you used to buy TV packages that were not charged in round numbers eg £7.90 per day or £16.50 for 3 days so it was impossible to use up all your credits.

Yes, that too, The only one that fitted was the £5 for two hours, everything else was random amounts but the credits came in £5 or £10 or £20 vouchers.

I’d love to see how much money the hospital actually receive from these contracts!

@CornishTiger If you read my posts below the answer is zero.

Privatisation of NHS means things like this started happening years ago. Dont vote tory, vote labour and get involved with save our nhs campaigns. Google the great NHS heist by Bob Gill. Get informed. It may be too late but worth it.

Dont vote tory, vote labour erm I think you will find it was under Blair that privatisation of nhs operations etc really took off! I’m no Tory fan (especially at the moment) but every government, irrespective of party has moved the nhs closer to privatisation for a quick “fix”

We got rid of them on the children's wards in my hospital because everyone kept complaining about the cost. We put our own tvs in with freeview but now only a handful of them work. People stole most of the remote controls as well.
When it was the paid for tvs, the company would come out and fix them but now nothing gets fixed or replaced. We can offer portable dvd players but otherwise you have to bring your own devices.
I think they still have the paid for tvs on the adult wards because I've seen some of the payment machines dotted around the hospital.

I haven't been in hospital since 6 years ago but even then it was a rip off the Tele.
I agree with others i think it is important when you're poorly
(No one had the Tele on out loud when I was there. You had headphones)
I like reading but there are times when it's harder to read and easier to watch Tele eg when you're poorly
And I'm not one of those who has unlimited data or a tablet either

@AhNowTed thank you I think the page hadn’t had the last few responses when I posted.

Who pays for the running costs eg electricity?

@CornishTiger the Trust pays for the electric. The provider services the system and mans a hotline but the service is poor, and the equipment old.

The NHS isn't happy about this at all, but they are locked into restrictive contracts so there is little they can do bar wait for the contracts to expire.

I'm thinking a good move to be a private company and sell things at inflated prices to the vulnerable via the nhs.

cunts.

If you are going to be in longer than a few days, it works out cheaper to buy a MiFi & take either a tablet or laptop in with you. You shouldn't have to pay to watch tv, the units they have that charge must cost a lot more than standard television. The pay per view units don't switch off, they are constantly lit up & keep you awake.

It's outrageous IMO.

Can't you take in your iPad and watch stuff on that?

Yeah it's shit. Talk about a captive fucking audience. It's just taking the fucking piss.

Where I work (a very acute and busy nhs hospital ward), there is free tv and WiFi. Which is lovely....except people steal the (universal )remotes and the weird receiver box things from the televisions. Which means that the televisions cannot be operated. There’s no one to fix them and we don’t have the money to replace the equipment. And then us staff get it in the neck from patients and relatives because of that (I reckon that this issue makes up the majority of complaints on my ward*). We also get it in the neck because some patients don’t like the range of channels (freeview) available.

At the hospital where I trained, there was a pay-as-you-go service for tv/Internet/telephone. The good thing about this was that the equipment was properly maintained and there was always someone on site to fix any problems. I know it’s rubbish forking out for tv, but I really do think that it’s better than having what we have. Esp with people kicking off left/right/centre about not having the channels they want, the WiFi speeds they want etc etc etc.

It’s a tough one!