NHS patients get looped video message from health secretary

Patients in NHS hospitals in England have been confronted with a looped video message from health secretary Andrew Lansley.

The video can be switched off, but some have criticised the decision to play the clip until patients choose to change it, BBC News reports.

On the video, the minister said: "Hello, I'm Andrew Lansley, the health secretary. I just want to take a few moments to say that your care while you're here in hospital really matters to me.

"I hope it's as good quality care as we can possibly make it and I do hope you'll join me in thanking all the staff who are looking after you while you're here."

The message from Hospedia is played as part of a looped video repeated every three to five minutes in 50,000 hospital beds across the country, though not those in intensive care or emergency wards.

Patients can choose to pay varying prices for video entertainment services using the screens, or instead switch off the screens or choose free radio broadcasts.

Chairman of campaign group Health Emergency Geoff Martin said: "The last thing anyone recovering from surgery or illness needs is the health secretary on a permanent loop like some pro-privatisation big brother.

"Perhaps this is some cynical government ruse to speed up discharge of patients by driving people out of the wards as they try and escape the permanent misery of an Andrew Lansley TV message."

Lansley quipped to BBC Radio 4's Today programme: "One constituent told me their baby's first experience of life was to see me on a monitor, which he found rather unnerving. He wasn't sure about the baby."

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