Katie McCracken said she was incredibly frustrated to find the television in her room was restricted to the ABC and a health information channel unless she paid $10 per day. 

“It’s really annoying, this is free TV in a government-funded hospital, why should we have to pay when it’s free everywhere else?” Mrs McCracken asked.

“It’s not Foxtel or Austar, just regular channels and a couple of channels of old movies. It’s ridiculous, I pay $12 a month for Netflix and you can watch that on four different devices.”

Wagga Rural Referral Hospital changed to a user-pays model supplied by Hills Health Solutions last August, according to business service manager Michael Morris. 

“The ‘general commercial model’ for patient entertainment systems is that the provider supplies and installs the infrastructure free of charge and the revenue generated from the television service is collected by the provider to recover their costs,” Mr Morris said.

“It is common for this model to include a provision for the hospital to collect a percentage of the revenue, based on overall usage.

“The move to a user-pays service is in line with many other hospitals across NSW and allows Murrumbidgee Local Health District to focus on the core business of patient care.”

However, Mr Morris said patients could bring their own personal entertainment devices provided they didn’t disturb the safety or health of other patients.