Hospital TV Rental $12,50 / day for free to air TV SICKENING behavior
In Hospital for the Medicos cure my ills, feed me pills, while HTR drills. Very cosey for those in bed with hills. For that price they could provide UpToDate tv’s with access to all pay tv channels, ay a time when their passwords aren’t front of mind. The adjective’s
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Welcome to the community @ebloke
Any particular hospital service your comments relate to?
Many hospitals, now provide a screen with each bed. Similar to how hospitality and aged care facilities have integrated services and media delivery.
Those we’ve experience of integrated menus for meal selection and other in hospital services. Hence an essential part of the hospital infrastructure. One might expect adding FTA TV, radio etc might be a near to zero sum added cost?
Pay TV services would be an added cost, although averaged over the different subscription types and access would a few dollars a day cover all?
For hospitality there are providers of packaged services with various equipment options. On one hand these deliver to the hospitality provider a hands off capital free solution to deliver in room services, room service ordering, locality and property information, even billing. There’s a cost to the hospitality business effectively an average per occupied room night that can be fixed and built into the room rate. The golden opportunity is to sell access to streaming services etc on a customer needs basis.
A suggestion is our hospitals have adopted a similar solution, but have chosen to offset the cost of the screen per bed packaged products by charging as they do? For private patients YMMV.
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Experiences over the past 6 months - public had a screen per bed enabled for a fee; private had a screen per bed with FTA programming and drum roll the food was not bad at all 
One aspect is the public hospital had a majority of emergency cases (including myself) - not so interested in TV when you are that crook but as one recovers one’s outlook changes. Private as electives – comfort matters more from the outset.
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My recent experience at Geelong Uni Hospital 3 days on the ward [designated COVID / Lung ward ] The TV provided was small but sufficient, a welcome even therapeutic. The Nurse told me that it was free for the whole 7 th floor as it was the declared COVID ward. TV had technical issues after a couple of days, reverting to basic mode. A common probably effecting a few beds randomly each day and tech staff would keep patching the system. I was latter that I thought why isn’t the TV system in the Hospital treated like any other that is used in the AID & RECOVERY of Patients. It seems like Privatization has failed to improve on expectations’ Ethically; profiting from pain, economically a nice little earner for a few. TV should be included in the system as is the bedside Nurse call & TV remote. surely any Hospital’s IT staff would be capable of running a system that aids in patient care. The value of TV as distraction from a Patient’s situation aids in a Patient’s relaxation which aids the Nursing staff as well the Patient.
TV rental rates charged at varying rates in our Hospital System are not comparable to what is available on pay or free tv. Which ever way I look at it, it’s a sick set up there, when your stuck in bed with nowhere else to stare.
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$12.50 for free-to-air TV 
is extortion. And all the more so because it’s almost impossible to find anything worth watching on free-to-air TV these days. And so many programs being repeatedly aired again and again.
Netflix cost $10 per MONTH!
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I m back in Geelong Uni Hospital and this time my tv works ok but the next bed doesn’t get it. I’ve checked and the whole of our floor should be free Hills Hospiital tv rental had a phone rep. for taking money for people who want to pay but no tech, person to deal with faults, on the weekend. I tried to connect my laptop {cast} so I could use my Pay tv account but could not. probably due to old tv’s not smart. The nurses tell us of the regular problems with the system and how tv’s are part of the patient care & comfort. Ultimately helping reduce their work load and probably medication - stress of patients. I will be raising this as a Health & Safety Issue with the Nurses Union and as a member of the ALP I will annoy the hell out of the polis.
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