Patient room TVs an untapped resource

Although they have been fixtures in nearly every hospital room in the country for decades, hospital televisions remain a largely untapped patient care resource, according to an article on the Facility Care website. They have the ability to capture the attention of patients and caregivers for hours every day during a hospital stay and can be a platform for delivering content.

Most patients see limited programming with marginal picture quality, others enjoy an at-home experience with HD clarity and extensive programming that is easily accessed via intuitive onscreen programming guides. But even the best HDTVs won’t look any better than CRT units without a sufficient distribution system. 

Hospitals can make tremendous strides in an increasingly competitive marketplace with enhanced TV content, the article said. Hospital TVs can deliver condition-specific patient education, hospital marketing and informational content, and other customized hospital channels. 

Hospital televisions are an ideal portal for interactive patient engagement systems that address staff workflow, clinical care and service recovery capabilities, according to the article. There is a growing awareness that with increasing competition, mounting healthcare mandates and tight budgets, hospital are being charged with making the most of their available resources.

Read the article.