Time to map out a plan for Villa's future
- Says blogger Matthew Turvey
Plan for patients to download films
Tuesday 30th September 2008, 11:40AM BST.
Patients in hospitals around the Black Country and Staffordshire will be able to download movies direct to screens above their beds under new plans announced today.
But the move, which would also offer patients cheaper phone calls, is on hold pending a report on whether the company involved has an unfair monopoly. Hospedia, the company which has bought out struggling hospital telephone and entertainment firm Patientline, is currently waiting to see whether the Office of Fair Trading will allow the merger to go ahead.
The OFT has to ensure that Hospedia would not have an unfair monopoly over the services after it also bought out Patientline’s main rival Premier Telesolutions.
In Staffordshire, the services are currently provided to more than 400 beds – 325 in Stafford Hospital and 109 in Cannock Chase Hospital.
It also serves Wolverhampton’s New Cross Hospital, Sandwell General Hospital and City Hospital in Birmingham.
The takeover deal by Hospedia would allow the company to bring in new technology.
It would mean that instead of just allowing patients to view the standard terrestrial TV channels, BBC One, BBC Two, ITV1, Channel 4 and Five, they would be able to rent a movie or programme and play it on their screen. It is thought that the service would work in a similar way to the BBC’s iPlayer or Channel 4’s 4OD, which allow people to temporarily download programmes and films which then delete themselves after the rental period has expired.
The move could also see patients’ telephone call costs plummet from 49p per minute to 20p per minute.
Patientline currently runs services to hundreds of beds around the region but is struggling under £85million of debt.
David Brookes, spokesman for the company, said: “It is still going through the Office of Fair Trading and we have to wait for their decision before we can discuss the plans further.”
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Take your ipod, mobile and own things….they are free/cheaper to use unlike patientline…
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The reason Patientline, didn’t make this work was for no other reason than their own selfish greed, had they charged a reasonable cost. and given a reasonable service, then there was a remote chance they could have may their system work.
They should not have had the monopoly in hospitals, they did and they milked the system for all it was worth.
The phone calls were nothing short of sheer extortion, not only did the person calling the patient have to pay for their phone call, the patient was also charged for receiving the call.
The way the TV system worked was a rip off.
I remember when my late mother was in hospital, she bought one of their cards, I think they were about £10, she tried their system, after watching the program she wanted to watch she was unable to remove the card to use it late, it just kept playing till all the credit was used up.
They had a captive clientele and they exploited them.
Jim of Bearwood.
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The miserable conditions suffered by NHS patients in the Wolverhampton hospitals needs some relief of this kind. It takes their mind off the incompetence of the staff,the poor treatment and insanitary conditions.
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everyone seems to be forgetting one thing, these are optional you DONT have to use them. when I had family in the hospital and I was to ill myself to visit i did call even at the cost. you call the ward and the staff say oh they are doing well.. really there not there feeling awful still and the hearing of a familiar voice can help that recovery process so for the extra £12 odd that was on my bill it was worth every penny, my nan made a full recovery and I know the callse to her helped by making her smile.. NOTHING is free anymore in this country the sooner we all get used to it the better..
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everyone seems to be forgetting one thing, these are optional you DONT have to use them. when I had family in the hospital and I was to ill myself to visit i did call even at the cost. you call the ward and the staff say oh they are doing well.. really there not there feeling awful still and the hearing of a familiar voice can help that recovery process so for the extra £12 odd that was on my bill it was worth every penny, my nan made a full recovery and I know the calls to her helped by making her smile.. NOTHING is free anymore in this country the sooner we all get used to it the better..
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I live in London and the price of the TV in hospital per day has come down from 3-50p. to 2-90p. which is still a lot when you are in for a couple of weeks.and it might be even more with more extras on top. with the cost of parking in hospital grounds and the like, it would be cheaper to go private.
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Jamie, £12 odd, doesn’t sound much does it? But that’s a fifth of my weekly income, then on top of that there is heating, council tax, food, clothing etc, so it may be worth every penny to you but to many its not an option that we have.
Previously there was a system in operation, that for many years worked very well, most wards had a TV area where people could go to watch TV free of charge, the TV’s were donated to the hospital, so the actual cost to the hospital was nothing.
The telephone system was simply a pay phone that was taken to a patients bed and plugged in as and when needed, then everything changed, the greed culture took over.
Doctors stopped running hospitals, accountants and a multitude of managers took their place, and they became a vast source of income for a select number of people.
The National Health Service was devised to provide affordable health care for the nation, keeping people healthy meant they could work and provide Income Tax for the government, so everyone was a winner.
What’s happened now is that there are a multitude of managers, pen pushers, committee members and numerous other freeloaders, all taking a share in the profits being made by our hospitals, and the original purpose of the NHS Hospital has been lost.
Most new hospitals being built would cost in the region of say 60 million pound, sound like a lot of money, but once that cost has been paid thats it, the new system is that private companies now build hospitals and they then rent them out to the NHS, so a hospital now rented over a 10 year period could cost 7 or 8 times that amount, and where do you think that money goes? To the people at the top, and if they have to pay that debt back, it means there is less money to spend on the patients.
How can you justify having more mangers than actual people providing medical care for the patients, managers on hundreds of thousands pounds a year, whose full time main interest, is taken up trying to screw a nurses pay down to less than £15.000 a year, why do you think we are having to import foreign nursing staff, because our nurses can get paid more money typing letters up in an office or serving customers in a superstore.
Jamie, why do you think hospital bosses have given the car parks that we paid for!!!!!! away to private parking companies, its because they can make even more money for the people at the top, at the patents expense.
Jamie, I hope you will research these facts, and then next time you will able to make an informed comment.
Jim of Bearwood.
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Jim, your rant looks like its more aimed at the NHS trust rather than the private company supplying the TV units which was at no cost to the NHS.. ALL wards do still have a tv room for patients to go and argue over what channel they would like to watch.. like I said “Optional” watch it from your bedside OR visit the day room and try to watch it there.. As for the £12 I wouldnt put a price on seeing my gran recover to be fit and well and just for your information it is also a fifth of my salary also. I personally would spend £12 to have my gran smile and feel better in herself. The telephone was on a trolley yes BUT it was down to the nursing staff to wheel it round to each patient that wished to make an outgoing call. These systems allow the staff to do the job they are underpaid for and not worry about getting calls for patients and medicate and care as they should. Jim the topic we are commenting on is about the OFT and the bedside TV systems your points are all true in what you say but wrong topic your points are all pretty much aimed at the NHS and the ivory towers these pen pushers sit in…
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Jamie, I am a 66 year old householder that doesn’t get into debt, I don’t owe anyone a penny, its called living within your means!!!!!
Recent headlines prove that a vast number, of the mostly younger generation, are being forced by various means, IE, banks offering them easy credit, them wanting to keep up with the Jones’s, or just needing more money to live on than is available to them, to them accruing vast debts, and in the extreme cases losing their homes.
So are you telling me that I should stop paying my council tax? Energy bills etc? I am sure the debtors court will be impressed that I have spent £12 on phone calls instead of paying my other debts, hey why don’t I go all the way and spend all my money on going to the pub, and having meals out, or what about foreign holidays, I am sure I could justify all those reasons, like “I needed a holiday because I was stressed”
Jamie, its called priorities, if I don’t pay for something I have bought its called stealing!!!!!!
Now you may not have the same legal responsibilities that I have and can afford to squander £12 on phone calls, and I have to say I am amazed that anyone survived in hospital before the telephone was invented, but I would still rather live within the law.
Your comment “Jim, your rant looks like its more aimed at the NHS trust rather than the private company supplying the TV units which was at no cost to the NHS” I thought my comment was very clear, it was aimed at the whole NHS System, the NHS is little to do with the health of patients now, and everything to do with funding the affluent lifestyles of the select managers and Quangos, that are haemorrhaging money from the NHS, this to the detriment of the health of NHS patients, do your research, when hospitals were run by doctors and matrons, did you ever hear of MRSA, Clostridium Difficile and all the other potentially lethal diseases that you catch in hospitals these days.
If your paying managers telephone number salaries, and to fund those payments you cease cleaning in hospitals, you will end up with the situation that you have now, people often go into hospitals with minor complaints and end up contracting incurable conditions.
As for the staff not being available to carry out other duties, that’s because accountants are now running hospitals and don’t understand that money needs to be provided to employ an adequate number of staff to cater for patients needs, at the moment elderly patients are dying in hospitals because nursing staff don’t have the time to stand and feed them and they cant feed themselves.
Strange money can always be found for even more consultant’s studies, and gastronomic functions for the elite few at the top, to tell each other how well they are doing their jobs.
Finally and I loved this piece, it really showed how naive you are “THE PRIVATE COMPANY SUPPLYING THE TV UNITS WHICH WAS AT NO COST TO THE NHS” now I wonder why that would be? Supposing I went to a pub manager and said, “I want to install 20 gaming machines in your pub, and I want you to pay me a hundred pound a week? you really believe he would?
If on the other hand I said “I want to install 20 gaming machines in your pub” and I will pay you 20% of the profits they generate, he would have my hand off, and who do you think pays???? The customer, or as is the case here, THE PATIENT’S!!!!! they don’t do it for nothing, they do it to make money at the patents expense.
I really hope that clarifies a few points James.
Jim of Bearwood.
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