Panel of Experts
A professional organisation will take steps to help minimise anxiety in its car parks. With paying for parking being one of the top stresses, how can organisations ensure that the process is simple and adhered to without adding extra strain to a hospital visit? It is important that parking operators take steps to make parking as stress free as possible. After all, the vast majority of people attending a hospital would rather not be there. Where paid parking is still required it is important to offer car park users a number of different methods of payment. Whilst the traditional ‘pay and display’ machine will likely always be a feature in NHS car parks, it is also important that operators allow users the flexibility to pay
Free parkingmand es de increas ited spaces The issue of availability in hospital car parks on lim creases cars will never go away. n i d which for spaces an With many sites being restricted by available circlingcle emissions space, and with more i h e s v trust users accessing the around NHS than in the past, the
by other methods of payment to alleviate any risk from faulty machines, or long queues. Pay-by-phone and Pay-by-app is becoming increasingly common where parking is invited, and the greater advent of smart phones and free public Wi-Fi is making these features accessible to more people than ever. When parking charges were abolished in hospitals in Scotland and Wales, patient accessibility didn’t improve. What are the other arguments for paying for parking on the hospital site?
problem will likely get worse. Some car park users may be abusing the free parking available in hospital car parks, especially when the site is located near to other transport hubs such as train stations and bus depots. The only realistic option to deter this is to make it too costly to the driver to park in such a manner. Parking charges could be kept free or cheap for short term parking, with escalating rates for longer term parking to discourage park-and-commute motorists. E Issue 21.5 | HEALTH BUSINESS MAGAZINE
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