How to Stop Charging Patients for Entertainment with a Hospedia Solution

The Current Patient Entertainment Platform and Plans for the Future

SPARK TSL's mission is that no patient has to pay for basic entertainment , and simultaneously, provide a return on investment and help tackle issues such as bed blocking and delayed discharge. This has already been achieved through SPARK® Media, however, our new acquisition of Hospedia puts our mission a few steps behind. We want to reduce the cost of basic entertainment to zero on the existing Bedside Units. To be able to achieve this, we need the help of Trusts and Charities.

Historically, legacy patient entertainment provider, Hospedia, installed £150 million pounds worth of infrastructure for free, into 120 hospitals in the UK. This was at no cost to the Trust, as the patient was paying a fee to use the service. Over time, as technology and digital transformation has progressed, the patient-pays model is no longer feasible in today's day and age.

After the acquisition, SPARK TSL was put in a difficult situation regarding the inability to lower the price. The current model not only pays for  remote monitoring, maintenance, 24/7/365 support and health and safety checks, but the parts that need replacing, cost of transporting them, the Area Service Engineers that repair the units and more. The only way to reduce the cost, or remove it completely, is for the Trusts and their Charities to partially or fully fund the service; or upgrade to SPARK® Media BSU. 

For those Trusts who still have the Hospedia Beside Units, we implore you to work with us to remove the patient pays model once and for all. The aim is to educate, entertain, engage and inform patients, whilst making staffs lives easier and benefiting the Trust and their Charities.

Help SPARK TSL Remove the Patient Pays Model

The current high price is due to a lack of utilisation. The more patients that use the Bedside Units, the lower the price can be while still being able to maintain the service. This is why when Trusts fund the cost of TV, it equates to as little as £1 per bed per day. We would love to remove the patient pays model overnight, but if we did this with no alternative funding, hundreds of thousand of patients wouldn't have access to basic entertainment such as TV. Therefore, the only way to remove this model is if the Trust and their charities help fund the provision of TV.

• Hexham General Hospital
• Wansbeck General Hospital
• North Tyneside Hospital
• South Tyneside Hospital
• Fairfield General Hospital
• Hope Hospital
• Northampton General Hospital
• Royal Oldham Hospital
• County Hospital
• Blackpool Hospital
• Sunderland Hospital
• Freemans Hospital
  
  

Results

University Hospitals North Midlands changed their existing pay to use solution in to a free to use system for patients, over a three-month period. The results showed a 300% increase in the TV usage, compared to that from before the trial began.

If you’d like to know more, contact us and we will tell you exactly how little it will cost to make the switch and put the SPARK back in your healthcare tech.