Find out why you’re paying $11 a day for free to air television in Victorian hospitals
News Corp uncovers how Victorian public hospitals are receiving financial kickbacks that inflate the cost of free to air television.
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Hospital patients are being fleeced up to $11 a day for access to free to air television.
News Corp Australia can reveal the cost is so high because hospitals get a percentage of the fee as a kickback and they have no incentive to get patients a better deal.
Hospitals are profiting from the television services while at the same time absolving themselves of responsibility when they don’t work because they have subcontracted out the service.
Hills Health Solutions provides the televisions in 43 per cent of public hospital beds around the country and promises service 24 hours a day, seven days a week, 365 days a year.
This is provided via two call centres, one in Australia and another in Sri Lanka which merely “log” complaints and it can take days before technicians arrive to fix problems.
Head of Hills Health Solutions Andy Hall told News Corp the company employs only “seven or eight” technicians to fix problems in NSW where it services 32 public hospitals that have thousands of beds.
The state government provides no funding to public hospitals to cover the cost of patient entertainment and Mr Hall said “if we weren’t around patients wouldn’t get access to a television”.
The $10-$11 a day charge for free to air television had to cover the cost of purchasing the television sets, staff wages and technicians as well as “we pay hospitals a royalty”, he said.
He would not disclose the size of that royalty.
The high cost of hospital televisions became a major issue in Tasmania last year with the state government promising to review its contracts after patients complained about poor service.
Ike Dittmann, who had a close family member in the Mersey Community Hospital, revealed the television he’d rented at $8 a day for his relative didn’t work for five days.
“When you consider that a monthly Netflix fee is around $10, $10 a day for TV access in hospital is unreasonable,” the CEO of the Consumers Health Forum, Leanne Wells, said.
“These high costs suggest that the financial arrangements need to be more transparent and, at the very least, that the fee is waived for those in financial duress.
“Surely in these times of advanced technology we can do better than this for our public patients,” she said.
Patients who wish to use their own devices to access the streaming TV services they subscribe to find that impossible in many public hospitals.
Often the Wi-Fi speed is so slow it times out before a connection can be made with an internet search engine or social media platforms.
Hills said it is supplying high-speed Wi-Fi to some public hospitals and the future of hospital entertainment is all about using devices like tablets rather than televisions.
This will also cut the cost of in hospital entertainment.
Under a new system called the Get Well Network being used in the Joan Kirner Hospital in Melbourne patients download an app to their devices that allows the hospital to communicate with them before they enter hospital as well as after they leave.
It allows the hospital to check the patient is well enough for surgery, provides educational videos on their condition and recovery, tells them which doctors and nurses are in charge of their care each day and what will be happening to them and when.
They can also use the device to order their food, surf the internet, make video calls to friends and loved ones and access movies and other entertainment.
The hospital provides low grade internet streaming for free but patients can upgrade to higher speeds for $5 a day, half the price of the cost of a basic television in other hospitals.
Hill Health Solutions provides tablet devices for those who do not own their own equipment.
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