Minister to reform Hospital Parking Rules ........

New guidelines have been drawn up to put an end to the stress of 'unfair' charges

Opinion:  I have to say that if a Hospital hasn’t organised their parking charges yet and grasped how the start of a Hospital visit is not with a Physician but a Parking Attendant yet ……   Readers here know my feelings on this subject.

From the article here that tells us that a Minister of the Crown must force District Health Trusts in the UK (Boards in NZ) to get their parking organised properly and look after the chronically ill and disabled, tells us a lot about the actual Boards and their governance.  They appear to believe that the Hospital only starts at the swoosh of the automatic doors on the front of the building. 

While the patients suffer poorly designed and operated car parks and with contracted operators who take advantage of the lack of oversight, the Trusts (Boards) may wonder why they have a high number of non-appearances or patients worried about their car while they should be worried about their health!

This article is a good reminder to District Health Boards in New Zealand to take the opportunity to get it right before the Minister of Health intervenes.

Article:

Relatives of chronically ill patients must be given free or cheap hospital parking under new rules announced by the Government.

Patients with disabilities and those with frequent appointments as well as staff working shifts will also benefit from the shake-up, according to Jeremy Hunt.

The Health Secretary said new guidelines for English hospitals had been drawn up to put an end to the stress of “unfair” charges.

Read more Here ............

Christchurch Hospital set to be car-free area soon

New options include security staff acting as valets.

Christchurch Hospital will soon become a car-free zone, but authorities are still deciding how to ferry people to and from the central-city site.

The hospital will lose about 150 car parking spaces when preparation work on the new acute services building starts.

A start date could not be confirmed by Canterbury District Health Board (CDHB), but a hospital committee report stated it would begin on 6^th September 2014.

Read More Here ....

Parking Space on a Par with the Skills of the Surgeon....SERIOUSLY!

Researcher Colin Howie, a senior orthopaedic consultant at Edinburgh Royal Infirmary, said there was evidence from parts of the NHS in the UK that factors such as food and parking were as important to patients as the operation.

“The clinical skills of the surgeon were on a par with a parking space,” he said.

Mr Howie said the NHS had to change its focus on how it was dealing with patients if it wanted to improve its satisfaction levels.

The study focused on more than 4,700 joint replacement surgery patients. Mr Howie said: “About a third of patients’ satisfaction comes from Doctor’s technical abilities, about a third comes from the Doctor telling them [patients] what’s going to happen and just under a third comes from the patients’ experience of the healthcare.

There is no doubt that the study is controversial and a blow to the egos of many in the healthcare industry. A response to the article in The Scotsman shows that. Harry Abbott writes, “Indeed, indeed...I see parking bays to replace operating theatres, spaces dedicated for appendicitis, others for replacement knees and hips, etc. ...all having, instead of anaesthetics, pay as you listen readings from today's news in the Scotsman. It'll be a sure and certain money spinner, and the savings on salaries of medical staff? Big figures, big figures.........

The problem is that many in the industry just don’t understand that the appointment starts from the time the patient drives onto the grounds, not the time they walk through the doctor’s clinic door. Patient or customer grooming has to be a major concern of hospitals and the best place to do that is in the car park.

I suspect there will be many people who will be up in arms about the validity of the survey or some such other reason to debunk the results, so as to keep the status quo. I applaud the survey but if nothing changes, then we know the reasons for having hospitals is not to provide care but to provide work for Doctors. As more than a couple of Doctors have told me in the past, if we didn’t have Hospitals, we wouldn’t have patients…. No seriously!

Kevin Warwood

Read the story here.

These views are my own.