Family faces static after father’s TV ‘lifeline’ goes out
For seven weeks, the TV in 87-year-old Duncan Cameron’s room at Vancouver General Hospital has given him a crucial connection to the rest of the planet while he recovers from a leg amputation. And it’s come at a considerable cost: $12 a day.
His family has paid nearly $600 to Hospitality Network so that the retired Vancouver police detective and Second World War veteran can keep up to date on the stock markets, news and sports. His daughter, Lisa Jones, described the price for TV as “exorbitant” for a basic cable service of about 45 channels.
“It’s not like Dad’s watching HBO in there,” she said. “I could understand if you were paying for a premium service, but when you’re paying for a basic service, $12 a day — that’s insane.”
The family can afford the cost and they’re happy to pay to keep their father connected, but Jones worries about patients who might be less fortunate.
“What about your elderly or your sick that are on income assistance? Are you telling me that they don’t deserve to have that one lifeline in the hospital? That’s crazy to me,” she said.
Hospitality Network offers monthly rates of $280, but the fee is non-refundable and no one in the family expected Cameron’s hospital stay to last this long.
The family’s frustrations with the TV service provider escalated on Sunday, when the ceilingmounted set in Cameron’s room stopped working. Jones spent a frustrating three days trying to get Hospitality Network to make the repairs, but it wasn’t until late Tuesday afternoon, after The Vancouver Sun spoke with the company’s CEO about the issue, that the TV was fixed.
“Because he’s lost his leg, he’s bedridden. It’s not like he’s walking around the hospital or he’s got other things to do. The TV is literally his lifeline to the outside world,” Jones said. “To take that away from him, and to have this drag on for so long … as a consumer and an advocate for my dad, it’s awful.”
She, her brother and her brother’s girlfriend said they each called or emailed the Reginabased TV provider multiple times Sunday, Monday and Tuesday to no end. According to VGH’s patient and family handbook, a representative from Hospitality Network is on site seven days a week from noon to 8 p.m.
Wireless Internet isn’t available in patient rooms at VGH, so it wasn’t possible for Cameron to use a video-streaming service.
The Regina-based company provides TV service for more than 200 hospitals and 170 care homes across Canada and has worked with VGH for at least 15 years, says CEO Serge Lafleur.
Lafleur said the daily TV fee is negotiated with Health Shared Services B.C. A portion of the cost is paid to VGH.
“It’s more expensive than if you compare it to at home, but when you look at the total value of what we provide back to the hospital, what we provide to the patient, we still believe it’s a fair price,” he said.
He said his company received just one call from Cameron’s family, on Monday at about noon, and promised a field technician would visit the hospital soon to take care of the problem. He said the family would be reimbursed the fees paid for the time the service was out.
Cameron’s son John said the notion his family called the company only once is “unbelievable.”