Hospedia

Hospedia Ltd is a private limited company, established in 1993. Hospedia acquired Patientline during July 2008 after the company entered administration. Hospedia then looked to acquire Patientline's main competitor, Premier Telesolutions, which would have given Hospedia responsibility for over 80,000 bedside television units.

The proposed acquisition was referred to the Office of Fair Trading in 2008. On 30 October 2009, the Competition Commission announced that it had cancelled its inquiry into the acquisition.

In August 2010 Hospedia Ltd was acquired from Hospedia Holdings LTD by Marlin Equity Partners, Tim Weil, Hospedia's CEO, claimed:Marlin’s significant capital base and shared vision for upgrading our installed base of over 65,000 terminals with our latest generation technology will enable Hospedia to provide a better service to patients and simultaneously provide hospitals with a means to significantly improve efficiency and reduce costs.

Hospedia acquired 65,000 bed locations from the former Patientline in 2012, which secured the company a position to project itself as the only choice provider for all future Healthcare IT services. This position is unlikely to be rivalled as the installation costs of the original programme were never recovered, making a nationwide installation programme by any other company unrealistic. The Monopolies and Mergers Commission recognised the danger of the company having a majority stake of these locations and blocked the merger with Premier Telesolutions in 2008, however Hospedia came to manage some of these sites including Northampton General Hospital.

JAOtech

In 2010, JAOtech based in Redhill, Surrey, gained a contract with Hospedia, to renew bedside terminals across their entire estate in the UK. The contract was worth $3.25 million over twelve months.

In September 2011, JAOtech & Hospedia had installed 6,500 new bedside terminals across the UK, this number was far lower than the expected number that was to have renewed contracts replacing the old T1 and T2 systems. By July 2012, the number of new units installed had increased by a further 8500, with the total in excess of 15,000.

JAOtech was acquired by Barco NV in 2011.

In November 2011, Hospedia announced that it had entered another partnership to secure funding for the continuing installation of the new systems with GE Capital.

Services

This service currently includes standard Freeview channels, on-demand films and TV, games, internet access and radio. Media is delivered to patients via Hospedia's bedside terminals. A variety of entertainment packages are available depending on a patient's length of stay and whether they wish to have access to films on demand, games, and/or internet. Registering on the bedside system allows patients to make free unlimited outgoing calls to 01, 02, 03 and certain 07 numbers, this was partly balanced by the revenue generated from incoming calls made to the patient's unique Hospedia 070 telephone number.

Concerned at the lack of transparency and the high retail charges for calls to 070 numbers, Ofcom launched a call cost review in 2017. This led to a consultation in 2018 which recommended capping the termination rate or wholesale rate at no more than the rate for calling a mobile number. Those changes took effect on 1 October 2019, the wholesale rate was reduced from around 49p per minute to just 0.489p per minute, and several landline and mobile phone providers immediately passed the saving on by including calls to 070 numbers within inclusive allowances.

Just as this change was happening, Hospedia abandoned usage of Personal Numbers starting 070 for bedside telephones, and has instead swapped to Premium Rate Numbers in various number ranges from 0872 800 xxxx to 0872 849 xxxx, supplied by Nexus Communications. Calls to these numbers incur an Access Charge of up to 65p per minute levied by the caller's telephone provider, and a Service Charge of 13p per minute levied by Hospedia. These are Controlled Premium Rate Services (CPRS) regulated by the Phone-paid Services Authority (PSA).

Hospedia has explored provision of patient surveys through their bedside terminals. This however has still to be proved as a successful way of conducting surveys as pilot schemes until now how proved slightly unbalanced as only a certain category of patients are able to use the bedside terminal. In the past, the Picker Institute has expressed reservations with regard to the use of bedside terminals. However, in 2012 the institute partnered with Hospedia to offer extensive real time patient surveys through their Frequent Feedback service.