500 patients at Royal Bournemouth Hospital without TV or phone

Patients have been left “depressed” after a technical fault within the system left 554 beds without access to a television or radio for nearly a week. 

Clare Meaning, whose 85-year-old dad is currently in hospital, said people on his ward are feeling “quite isolated” and “cut off from the world”. 

She added: “My dad is just sitting in the ward with other elderly patients and he’s just staring at the wall because there’s nothing to do. 

Royal Bournemouth Hospital (Image: Newsquest)

“We are trying our best to bring him some reading material and we’ve tried an iPad but he’s not very IT-savvy. 

“He’s having no contact with the outside; he doesn’t know what is going on in the news and he is starting to get a bit depressed.  

“Everybody is getting down mentally and it won’t help people with their recovery.” 

A spokesperson for Hospedia, who provides the patient TV and telephone system via bed side at RBH, said they were first alerted to the issue affecting 554 beds on Saturday, October 29 and attempted to resolve the issue “immediately”. 

Beds in a hospital (Image: Pixabay)

An engineer was dispatched and identified a core part had failed. Attempts to reboot it failed.    

A replacement part was sourced, delivered and fitted on Wednesday, November 2 but it failed to bring services back online, they said.

Hospedia say 454 beds were back online the following day, leaving 100 beds still affected, which should be repaired on either Saturday or Monday, they told the Daily Echo. 

The spokesperson added: “We are very aware of the inconvenience and frustration that this issue has caused and, in some cases, continues to cause and apologise sincerely to all those impacted by this issue.  

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“We have always had an ongoing commitment to both patients and the University Hospitals Dorset NHS Foundation Trust to provide a good, solid and reliable service at all times.  

“We pride ourselves on always doing our very best to ensure that any stay in hospital is made easier with the services that we provide.  

“On this occasion, a complex network fault has resulted in us being unable to achieve and resolve that as fast as we'd like, however we are working to resolve this as quickly as possible to resume the entertainment for patients.” 

A spokesman for University Hospitals Dorset apologised to its patients at RBH and said they are “working closely with Hospedia to get this problem sorted as soon as possible”.