← Autodidact Archive · Original Dissent · hqz
Thread ID: 13116 | Posts: 3 | Started: 2004-04-10
2004-04-10 22:38 | User Profile
[url]http://www.guardian.co.uk/Society/nhsperformance/story/0,8150,1189289,00.html[/url]
Letters flood in over NHS TV set row
John Carvel, social affairs editor Saturday April 10, 2004 The Guardian
The row over NHS hospital televisions that patients cannot switch off intensified yesterday after further complaints to the Guardian.
A report on Thursday described how 17,500 hospital sets were installed without off switches by Patientline, a company chaired by Derek Lewis, former director general of the prison service.
Patients had to watch from when the service came on automatically at 6am or 7am until it closed at 10pm. Those not wanting to pay ã3.20 a day for cable TV got hospital service messages instead.
Mr Lewis gave assurances that a second generation system - with an off switch - was installed in more than 80 NHS trusts. But readers with experience of the new system say the switches do not work.
Mr Lewis later said the software was normally set up to allow the off switch to work only at night - when the service finished anyway. Hospitals could vary this if patients were to be allowed to escape the flickering by day. But only five had done so. In the others the off switch was turned off.
One reader emailed Sir Nigel Crisp, NHS chief executive, to complain. David McNeil, head of his private office, replied: "I have sort [sic] clarification and ... I have confirmed that all type 2 machines have an on/off button. The system is streamed between agreed hours, but the trust is able to ask Patientline to activate the on/off button where required."
Another reader who was at St George's hospital, Tooting, south london, complained he "had this unwanted continuous TV forced upon us. The nurses were aware of the problem, but at no time was any suggestion made that sets could be turned off ..."
2004-04-12 05:08 | User Profile
Forcing sick people to endure the torture of the televitz is cruel and unusual punishment. They should just throw the d@mn thing out the window!
2004-04-12 16:37 | User Profile
Reminds me of Max Headroom, where it was illegal to own a TV with an off-switch; of course the TVs were 2-way, so the advertisers could tell who was watching. It was sort of a libertarian anarcho-capitalist utopia as interpreted by George Orwell.