Hospital Radio
Valley Park Radio is broadcasted 24 hours a day on Channel 1. Patients in Darent Valley Hospital can listen for free on Channel 1 at your TV Bedside Unit. Everyone else can listen online! The radio provides music, information and local news to our patients and colleagues in the hospital. Patients can also make requests from the TV Bedside Units by dialling *800 on the phone for free.
Bedside entertainment
At Darent Valley Hospital there are TV Bedside Units that are available to use. There are free and paid entertainment services available, as well as hospital information and communication through the telephone. These units were previously run by Hospedia, but are now under the leadership of WiFi SPARK.
Free services
- TV from 6am till 12pm on all free view channels
- Children’s TV from 7am till 9pm on all free view channels
- A selection of Radio channels including Valley Park Radio
- Unlimited 2-minute calls from your bedside to mobiles. Unrestricted outbound calls to 01/02/03 numbers (Please note that external calls to the bedside are charged at a higher rate than a local call.)
Premium entertainment
This includes:
- 75+ Movies
- TV past 12pm for adults
- TV past 9pm for children
- Sports through SKY
There are varying fees for these services depending on types of packages and how many days you are purchasing for. Patients can choose which package they’d like to purchase on the Bedside Units then continue the payment through a smart device. To learn more about how to pay, visit https://www.wifispark.com/hospedias-new-payment-system
If the patient doesn’t have a smart device, or wants to purchase long stay or sports packages, they need to phone the call centre. This can be done by picking up the phone, turning it around, and pressing the Green Operator button.
Note: Some entertainment packages are only available through the call centre.
For more information about the units. Please visit Hospedia FAQ.
What's free?
- Unlimited 2-minute calls from your bedside to 07 numbers.
- Unrestricted outbound calls to 01/02/03 numbers.
To make a call, the patient needs to pick up the phone. Once it’s picked up, they will see a phone dial screen on the unit.
The patient can turn the phone around where they will find a keypad as well as a Green operator button which will take them to our customer care team.
Paid inbound calls
The patient won’t get charged when calling from the bedside. But family/friends who call them by using their bedside number (displayed at the bottom of the screen on the home page) will be charged. To cover the cost of running the service, we charge 13p per minute. However, the caller can also be charged up to 65p on top of that because of their network operator. Therefore, you should encourage the patients to call, rather than their friends and family to call them.
In this tab there is a series of questions that will help the user understand the unit. This includes how to use the remote control. If you are unsure about anything on the units, this is a good place to go.
Payment Options
From the home page shown above, the patient can select the service they wish to use. They can only go so far along an entertainment section before they are prompted to purchase. It will give them a standard selection of days to choose from. But if that patient is staying there for a long time, you should advise them to call the customer care team by picking up the phone and pressing the Green Operator button. Longer stay packages are only available through the call centre and are better value.
Logging in and out
Patients can use the free services on the bedside units without logging in. This is because all units are auto logged in as ‘Guest’. However, if they wish to purchase an entertainment package, they first need to log in.
This is so they can move their paid entertainment over to another bedside unit by logging out of their existing one and logging into a new one.
Patients can create an account by pressing ‘Your Account’ then ‘Log out account’ to exit the ‘Guest’ account. Now the patient will be able to create an account. The screen will go back to the idle video. The user simply needs to press any button and they will be taken to this page. The user can then register. They will need to input their title, first name initial and full last name as well as their date of birth. Once complete, they will be asked if they want to send a message to friends or family to let them know where they are. They can accept or decline this service. Then they will be taken to the homepage where they can pay for entertainment.
How to pay
Navigate to ‘buy an entertainment package’ and choose one of the options that comes up on screen. If the patient is looking to purchase a SKY package or is looking for longer stay options, they will need to phone customer care. They can do this through the bedside phone by pressing the green operator button, or by using their own mobile device and call 0345 414 1234.
If the patient chooses a bundle, they need to confirm their selection. The patients name will then appear on the unit asking them to confirm their account. If it’s wrong they will have to sign out of that account and make a new one, else select ‘Yes! That’s me’.
The patient will have 3 options to pay. Patients can choose to receive/send the payment link via text, email, or QR code. The person receiving the link will need a smart device and connection to the internet to then pay for the package. If they don’t have a smart device, the user needs to call customer care.
When the link is received and clicked on, the user will be taken to a payment page where they can choose from standard debit/credit card, or use Google/Apple Pay or PayPal. More information about this payment system can be found here.
Your account
On this page the patient can view account history of past purchases, fill in a survey through ‘Give us your feedback’, log in and out of the bedside unit, and tell friends and family where they are. The vending machines are slowly being decommissioned but there may still be a few cards around. To redeem the entertainment package on the card, the user needs to input the number on the card into the bedside unit.
Contact our Area Service Technicians (AST) that are periodically on site to help with repairs. When the units are broken, a signal will be sent out telling us about the fault. The AST will then be scheduled to come on site to fix the unit given that they have the parts.
For Darent Valley Hospital the AST is John Hardinges. If a unit has been broken for a while, staff can call 0345 414 1234 to report the fault in case it wasn’t picked up by the system. You can also call through the Bedside Units by picking up the phone and pressing the Green Operator button.
For more information about the bedside units, please visit https://www.wifispark.com/en/hospedia-faqs