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Television service coming back soon at Comox hospital

After about five months with no patient TV at St. Joseph's Hospital, the service should be fully reinstalled by a different provider.

After about five months with no patient television options at St. Joseph's General Hospital, the service should be fully reinstalled by a different provider within a couple of weeks.

Back in May, the pilot project entertainment system — installed by Healthcare Resource Group (HRG) in 2010 at no cost to the hospital — was removed due to functionality problems.

St. Joseph's gave the company until the end of July to get the equipment back up and running properly and reinstalled in the hospital. HRG failed to meet the deadline and the hospital contacted its previous service provider, Hospitality Network.

"Hospitality Network have been very good. They've come in and they are just about to go live in the next couple of weeks with a system of televisions that have been installed at the bedside," Eric Macdonald, St. Joe's vice-president of finance, capital and support services said Wednesday.

"As we speak now, many of our rooms currently are benefiting from this because they've turned on the cable feed to them. It'll be available on a user-pay basis starting in mid-October."

Macdonald added the new television sets are much more modern than the Hospitality Network sets at the hospital.

"It'll be much nicer sets that was the case before. They're all kind of very stylish and new looking and so we're hoping for some good reviews on that," he said. "So I think the public is going to be pleased with the content and the features on these TVs."