Transcript
BOB GARFIELD: Talk about captive audiences. Now there is an actual satellite TV service that is beamed to hospital rooms around the clock. Formally launched this fall, the Patient Channel broadcasts to patients in wards and visitors in waiting rooms. Imagine lying in your lonely bed of pain while such graphic delights as Advances in Arrhythmias and Beyond Heartburn dance across the screen.
BROOKE GLADSTONE: It sounds like an old Firesign Theater comedy routine.
GAME SHOW HOST: Now, patient -- you've got 10 seconds to tell us what you've got, and for the last time --Beat the Reaper!
MAN: [COUGHING] I, I feel-- [HEIGHTENING MUSIC UNDER] [COUGHING] I, I think I feel [COUGHING] -- I don't know whatever-- [GASPING FOR AIR] --whatever it is, I - I want to die-- [BUZZER]
GAME SHOW HOST: Ohhhhh, I'm terribly sorry. That's not correct.
BROOKE GLADSTONE: We're not there yet, but we could be some day. As for today, Jon Kalish reports on The Patient Channel.
JON KALISH:The Patient Channel carries programs focusing on cancer, diabetes, lung disease and arthritis. Peter McCabe oversees the channel.
PETER McCABE: Really, nothing but grave reviews-- rave reviews -- sorry -- from our customers.
JON KALISH: The Patient Channel has signed up 500 hospitals since it went on the air in September. The channel is owned by G.E. Medical Systems. The Wisconsin-based company makes big-ticket, high tech equipment such as MRIs. Again, Peter McCabe.
PETER McCABE: When you're at the hospital, you want to know what's going to happen to me? what are they going to do to me? What are my chances of recovery? And there's a high level of urgency around seeking that knowledge and that information. You know, forget Oprah. Tell me how to get healthy! [MUSIC]
JON KALISH: The Patient Channel has talk show interviews and documentary-style programs that cover everything from cooking low fat meals to coping with chemotherapy.
PATIENT CHANNEL:Today we'll provide an in-depth exploration of one of the most interesting, compelling and possibly misunderstood diseases to affect men -- prostate cancer.
PATIENT CHANNEL:Welcome to the Cutting Edge Medical Report. In today's program, we'll examine the relationship between high cholesterol and heart disease, and we'll look at some of the...
JON KALISH: At Holy Name Hospital in Teaneck, New Jersey 73 year old John Welch is being treated for complications resulting from chemotherapy. Over the last month he has followed the BRAT diet, a regimen of banana, rice, applesauce and toast, and he watches the Patient Channel.
JOHN WELCH: I like it, because it gives us some valuable information -- as far as I'm concerned. And they go over several subjects -- related to health. But they, they didn't mention the BRAT diet. [LAUGHS] I can understand why. [LAUGHTER] [MUSIC]
PATIENT CHANNEL:I've cooked some chicken breasts here, actually, and with the skin on so as to preserve the moisture in it, and I've taken away the fat, and now I've got residue in the pan.
JON KALISH: G.E. Medical systems is touting the Patient Channel as a way of fulfilling patient education requirements at a time when hospitals are faced with a shortage of nurses. Holy Name Hospital nurse Pat O'Connor.
PAT O'CONNOR: It helps very much. Because they can listen at their own pace. If they miss anything, they can always turn it on and watch it again. The television is there when we're not. This is not their only means of learning, but it's good reinforcement.
JON KALISH: G.E. expects the Patient Channel to reach about two-thirds of the discharged hospital patients in the country by the end of this year. For now, hospitals get the channel for free when they subscribe to G.E.'s Tip TV - an employee education service that costs up to 7,000 dollars a year.
PATIENT CHANNEL: Respiratory Supply of USA provides high quality products for use in Nebulizer machines, like Zopinex Inhalation Solution from Seprocor [sp?].
JON KALISH: The channel hopes to generate 20 million dollars a year in ad revenue by the time it's fully operational.
PATIENT CHANNEL: ...in strengths that provide just the right amount of medicine for you.
JON KALISH: G.E. Medical Systems' Peter McCabe says the channel's audience may be small, but it is more receptive to certain ads than a general TV audience.
PETER McCABE: You can advertise Flavix [sp?] at the Super Bowl and reach, you know, tens of millions of eyeballs, but most of those eyeballs are people who are very, very healthy and aren't, frankly, interested, and they - they'll shut off.
JON KALISH: The Patient Channel says it does not directly endorse any of the products it advertises, but Gary Ruskin of the consumer group Commercial Alert argues that there is an implicit endorsement.
GARY RUSKIN: When hospitals say watch the Patient Channel, they're giving the Good Housekeeping Seal of Approval to both the programming and, more dangerously, to the advertising. These ads do not provide balances or impartial or objective information. They often contain misleading and inaccurate information.
JON KALISH: But the Patient Channel says its commercials are approved by its own medical advisory board. Still, Commercial Alert and three dozen health professionals have sent letters to hospital chains asking them not to carry the Patient Channel. Again, Gary Ruskin.
GARY RUSKIN: Hospitals are for healing! And this is part of a broader effort by companies like General Electric to stick an ad into every nook and cranny of our lives and culture! And some places just ought to be off limits, and hospital beds ought to be one of them.
JON KALISH: Well, not if G.E. Medical Systems has anything to say about it. The company hopes to beam the Patient Channel into eleven hundred hospitals by the end of the year. For On the Media I'm Jon Kalish in New York. [MUSIC]