Comment: Visiting the sick now being denied to all but the rich (From Watford Observer)
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Comment: Visiting the sick now being denied to all but the rich
1:36pm Friday 8th March 2013 in News
By Mike Wright, Chief Reporter
Parking at Watford General Hospital is an expensive ordeal I would wish on no one.
Its £4 minimum fee has been a source of anger in the town for years. It is a punitive charge on people who usually have no option but to pay it.
Anger over the charges has translated into political action with Watford Borough Council examining the issue last year.
The result was the council requested the authority in charge of the hospital, West Hertfordshire Hospitals NHS Trust, drop the minimum fee to £2.50.
The trust declined the suggestion, saying it could not make changes to its current contract with the company CP Plus, which runs its car parks.
The issue was recently exacerbated further when the trust announced that it would be scrapping free parking for blue badge holders.
This means the disabled and people with chronic conditions will be hit with the steep charges too. The trust justified the move on the grounds that it makes a loss on its parking.
In the light of this, the Watford Observer requested to see the contract between the trust and CP Plus for car park management under the Freedom of Information Act.
The trust released the contract, but blacked-out all the figures, making it impossible to tell what kind of value it provides for the NHS, patients and taxpayers.
The trust used part of the act relating to commercial interest which states: “Information is exempt if its disclosure under this Act would, or would be likely to, prejudice the commercial interests of any person (including the public authority holding it).”
This contract has very real ramifications for people in Watford and beyond.
I recently spoke to a contact who had a family member at the hospital. She recalled hearing a husband in the bed next to them pleading with his spouse not to visit him every day due to the mounting expense.
However, for now, residents will have to continue paying fees without knowing the details about why they are so high.
All we do know is this contract appears to be benefiting neither trust nor the people visiting its hospitals. Those facts alone make a compelling argument for the details to be made public.
So the bridge over the pond is going to be built. In the past I have questioned the need for this trans-aqua walkway, which appears to have been construed by some in the town hall as all outright attack on the plan.
To be frank, I don’t have vociferous feelings either way.
But after all these months I’m no further forward in figuring out the logical reasoning behind the bridge.
I still harbour suspicions that it is a facile idea thrown up by the highly-paid consultants who designed The Parade revamp rather than a facility desperately needed by pedestrians roaming the town centre.
Yet this is all hypothetical. Maybe once it’s built we’ll discover it is an indispensible addition to The Parade that leaves us all wondering how we ever did without it.
Comments(17)
crazyfrog
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2:46pm Fri 8 Mar 13
Veritas
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5:04pm Fri 8 Mar 13
Also can the WO remind us what the previous chief Filowski said at a Croxley meeting into the rip off charges.
"that patient care would suffer" if parking charges reduced.
Implying money from parking was used to pay for patient care? A blatent lie!!
We need a proper investigation into these rip off charges.
Wacko Jacko
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5:10pm Fri 8 Mar 13
MarsLander
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10:17pm Fri 8 Mar 13
and I thought they worked for us.
Mohandas
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9:53am Sat 9 Mar 13
crazyfrog wrote:Marslander once again I'm in agreement with you. If we encouraged more people to visit this would speed up recovery, ensure that patients are receiving the right care and prehaps cut NHS costs
Its disgusting and unacceptable whoever signed it on the NHS's behalf should be sacked end of !
As the financial crisis exposed chasing Money Money Money as the Abba song says It's a rich man's world. But the long term damage to creating real jobs is one of the reasons in the rise of record levels of youth unemployment.
I SEE U
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10:32am Sat 9 Mar 13
Hornets number 12 fan
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11:18am Sat 9 Mar 13
I SEE U wrote:Thats big statement to make without any proof? can you back this up?
The reason for the high price for parking is to pay for the clinical leads car and the christmas parties, it wont change.
Home Truths
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8:09am Tue 12 Mar 13
MarsLander
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8:22am Tue 12 Mar 13
Any chance of that?
Fat chance!
OAC Bailiff
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8:23am Tue 12 Mar 13
The Rover
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8:57am Tue 12 Mar 13
The Harlequin Car park is a well maintained, Multi Storey Car Park which is designed to make money. The Hospital Car Park is really no more than Tarmac over a field, which is there to allow visitors to park to visit their sick friends/family. How can this make sense? How can the Harlequin charge significantly less than the hospital for parking?
We have ALREADY paid for the hospital car park through our taxes, so ANY charge they make means we are paying twice. This is wrong.
The hospital are not listening to any suggestions that their parking charges are too high, and will not disclose details of their contract with CP Plus. The only way to make them listen would be if everyone boycotted the car park, or refused to pay for parking en mass. Is a parking ticked issued by CP Plus enforcable? Could they cope if no-one paid, and would they want to remain in the contract if no-one paid? Just a thought!
OAC Bailiff
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9:07am Tue 12 Mar 13
Peter Jeffree
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9:53am Tue 12 Mar 13
.com/whht2013/
Roy Stockdill
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10:58am Tue 12 Mar 13
Mohandas
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12:45pm Tue 12 Mar 13
Roy Stockdill wrote:It’s a reasonable point Roy. However OAC Bailiff and the Rover present fairly strong arguments.
I await howls of outrage for pointing this out, but there are plenty of buses that pass the hospital in both directions at fairly regular intervals!
In fairness Roy, there are a whole host of reasons why a variety of people from miles around go to a large hospitals eg ‘a quick’ blood check, A&E, maternity, fractures, etc and perhaps a bus is not the best. Are bus routes and timetables related to hospital peaks as I’m not convinced that bus timetables bear any relationship to visiting times especially in the evenings especially the after effects of the night economy? Some areas are very poorly served by buses especially at weekends when people may have more time.
Veritas
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10:53am Wed 13 Mar 13
Finally some truth
Hornets number 12 fan says...
1:46pm Fri 8 Mar 13
Like everything else in this country now we pay for it again and again! The Local Trust have proven themselves to have the financial interests of patients and their families very low down on their list of priorities!