NHS patients are being charged up to £10 a day to watch TV from their hospital beds, it has emerged.
Provider hospedia raked in profits of £21million last year.
A probe by The Mirror found one pensioner was charged £700 during an 11-month stay in hospital.
The firm operates in around 150 NHS facilities and boasts of “serving 10 million patients, five million visitors and 500,000 healthcare staff”.
Out of 87 acute hospitals that responded to a Freedom Of Information request it emerged that 64 charged for use of TV.
Hospedia provided the service for 57 of those.
To use it patients must buy credit on cards similar to topping up a pay-as-you-go mobile phone.
Typical rates are £7.90 a day for a TV bundle and £9.90 a day for extra movie channels.
One relative said: ““We have spent more than £700 in TV and phone charges. It’s disgusting.”
Hospedia also runs bedside phones and caused controversy earlier this year when it was found to be charging 50p a minute.
Former publican Mario O’Neill went into Milton Keynes Hospital, Bucks, with a bad back and discovered he had prostate cancer.
He put £14 on his card before being moved to a ward without TVs and losing his credit.
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Mr O’Neill, 64, of Luton, Beds, said: “I came back into hospital six weeks later and the card had been wiped. I was so annoyed.
"You’re lying there on your own having quite a tough time. There are vulnerable people in there being taken for a ride. It’s a complete rip-off.”
Hospedia said the pricing structure was in-line with the “Patient Power Project”. It said the stipulation was that “all operating costs... be borne by the provider, without cost or risk to the taxpayer or the NHS”.
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