A rant about parking at Hammersmith Hospital, which I slightly hope no one reads.

I know this is another diversion from cooking, but I have worked myself up into a right tizz about the fact that Hammersmith parking services seem to think it is perfectly acceptable to ask me to waste NHS medical staff time to prove that I was detained in a paediatric consultant appointment and thus got my 3-minute-late parking ticket.

If anyone out there is, for example, a pissed off Dr at the hospital fed up of being asked to provide a letter ON HEADED PAPER (seriously do these people know how many attempts at printing it takes not to get it back to front and upside down, that is two patient appointments worth) for patients whose appointments go overdue, mostly because quite rightly more urgent cases came in and had to be seen to first... anyway if anyone is out there please feel free to share this with one of the idiot parking people or hospital management. Their response to my letter below was 1) the car park doesnt mainly serve the hospital (oh really, funny how it is LOCATED NEXT TO THE HOSPITAL) and 2) I failed to provide a letter on headed hospital paper proving that I was detained (Goddam right, I believe it would be immoral to ask them to do so) and 3) my suggestion at how they might avoid such problems in the past, like with a phone and pay system, was ignored and my other suggestion dismissed.
[now added - my response their theirs, below]

To: Hammersmith and Fulham parking services

Cc: Steve McManus, Chief Operating Officer, Hammersmith Hospital/Queen Charlotte’s Hospital (Imperial College Healthcare) [nb no reply from him, probably he has better things to do]

27 January 2013, sent again after Notice to Owner 27 March 2013

Dear Sir/Madam,

PCN XXXXXX APPEAL

Re: Does Hammersmith and Fulham parking really think it has the right to sap NHS staff time to justify its penalty charge notices?

Thank you for your notice to owner reviewing my appeal for the penalty charge notice. To review the situation, I was issued the PCN a few minutes after my hour long ticket expired as I was with the Consultant paediatrician at Queen Charlottes/Hammersmith Hospital for an appointment in the paediatrics department with my unwell 3 month old daughter. The walk between the car park and the clinic with my baby and car seat (total about 7kg) was about ten minutes.

You asked me to provide you with a letter on hospital headed paper to verify that this appointment ran later than anticipated.  Therefore, one of the following must be true:

a)    You believe it is morally acceptable to ask busy, highly trained NHS staff to check their attendance records to see if an appointment from more than a month ago ran over scheduled time. Presumably you know that no such record is likely to exist, so this is knowingly wasting the time of the NHS personnel.

or

b)   You ask this in the knowledge that any moral person will believe this to be an immoral request and be forced to capitulate to your demands

Given that this car park serves mainly the Hammersmith/Queen Charlottes Hospital, the majority of its users must find it difficult to predict how long their waiting time for their appointment must be and how long that appointment will last.  And a maternity hospital, too.  Are the following scenarios ethically acceptable do you think?

SCENE 1:

The scene:  woman has been in labour for 36 hours. She is mentally and physically exhausted, however she is determined to have a birth without high-end pain relief.  Because of this, she is reliant on her husband- her birth partner- and the hospital staff for support and encouragement for a good outcome to the birth.

Midwife: well done – you have worked so hard to get here, we can see the baby’s head now, you are nearly there.  Breathe

Husband: sorry honey but I just have to nip out and put some more money on the parking

Woman: I AM DIVORCING YOU AS SOON AS WE GET OUT OF HERE

SCENE 2: the paediatric walk-in unit, having arrived at an appointed time but been waiting an hour for justifiably more important cases to be seen first, mother and baby are seen by paediatric consultant:

Consultant: so we have reviewed the symptoms, now lets discuss the risks and benefits of putting your infant on this drug at 3 months old

Mother: sorry, I can’t stay as my parking is about to run out so I won’t be able to listen to this part of the conversation

Or

Mother:  sorry could you stop the appointment and I will come back in 20 minutes when I have walked to the car and back to put more on the parking

The solution:

May I ask why you have not introduced a barrier system whereby visitors enter, take a ticket, and pay for the time that has expired when they leave?  It seems a very simple idea and would prevent the absurd situation of people trying to predict how long they are going to take to give birth, trying to predict their hospital visit, and most importantly, you would not be asking people to use up NHS resources to justify how long they were at the hospital.  Alternatively many councils are using payment by phone where you can top up remotely if you are running late.

A more cynical person than me might think that not having a barrier/phone system was a deliberate ploy to earn more revenue through the PCNs that you know you will be able to issue when people have unpredictable timings for their parking.

I previously sent you this letter with the parking ticket that I bought in good faith, which you did not return to me. I trust this will be passed on as appropriate.

I trust that you will cancel my PCN and urgently review the parking system.  If you do not consider this faithfully, I will be delighted to seek the opinion of a broader audience on this matter through social media/consumer affairs programmes.

Yours,

XXXXXX

----------

Following their response I have sent this:

Dear Sirs,

Thank you for your letter in which you either dismiss or ignore many of the points in my letter. Perhaps you did not have time to read my letter properly so I am highlighting the points you did not address or misunderstood below:

1)   you mentioned it would not be possible to install a barrier system as it would need to be manned. However you ignored my suggestion for pay-by-text. I am sure you know that this is used successfully elsewhere, would solve issues of people in hospital appointments or in the waiting room needing to top up payments and would not require on-site staff.

2)   You persist in demanding a letter on headed paper to say that my appointment with the consultant paediatrician in the paediatric ambulatory care unit ran over, causing my parking ticket to run over by 4 minutes.  You also ignore my question about whether you think it is morally acceptable to ask highly qualified and busy medical staff to do such a task, especially given that you have ignored my suggestion for making it easier for patients to top up their parking (see point 1).  Can I suggest that you therefore print this letter onto your headed paper and send it to the entire staff of the Hammersmith and Queen Charlottes Hospitals?

Dear Doctors, Nurses, other healthcare professionals and support staff based at Queen Charlottes and the Hammersmith Hospital. 

We run the car park behind your hospital.

Occasionally you may be quite busy in your clinic/on your ward, and patients who think they are there for an hour may be there longer.  On these occasions we would like you to write a letter on your headed note paper for every patient parking in the car park to state the reason for the delay.  Each letter may take you about 10-15 minutes to do, which might be the same amount of time as it takes for you to see a patient, however we think that is just fine. If we or any of our relatives want to be seen in your clinic we won’t mind at all that you are writing letters about parking.

Thank you, the parking team.

3)   You note that the car park is not intended primarily to be a hospital car park, it is for people using the Scrubs or the prison or other activities in the area. The fact that it is a large car park next to the hospital, which has only a small car park, is something you choose to ignore.  I think you might want to do a reality check on this one, or perhaps put up a notice that says something like “Don’t use this car park if you are using the hospital and are not prepared to waste NHS staff time if your appointment runs over and you can’t leave your appointment and do a 20 minute round trip to the car with your 7kg baby to top up the meter”

4)   You note that the car park is under local authority not run by the hospital, and that this is a key part of your argument for justifying the above.  I apologise for being blunt but you need to get out more.  Can I recommend Douglas Adams point of view gun, in which the user firing the gun sees a situation from the other persons point of view?  Here are some things running through peoples minds when they are parking in the car park:

a.     “I am really worried about seeing my aunt Gladys/mum/daughter. We are waiting for some news on some tests/having a difficult procedure/I am upset about it but trying not to show it for their sake”

b.     “I really hope the results are ok, my heart would break if there was anything really wrong with them. The staff are great and I know they are doing their best.”

c.      “Afterwards I need to get to pick up my child from school/take some shopping to my dad/go to work, but I don’t want to rush this visit either”

d.     I wonder which authority runs this car park? Obviously it makes my life materially different if it’s the hospital or the local authority and I will give the matter some serious thought.

Once again I look forward to hearing from you.